We refer to it as ‘the beautiful game’ but supporting your team can sometimes feel like being trapped in a psychological thriller.
Every weekend begins with hope, descends into dread and ends with one eye on the league table and the other on your Apple watch blood pressure app.
We are told football is about escapism, community and joy. It’s supposed to be fun, yet most spend 90 minutes pacing the living room and catastrophising over goal difference.
In this group therapy session, six supporters from different clubs compare notes on the peculiar, irrational misery of caring far too much about 11 strangers in matching shirts.
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Charlton Athletic
By the time we’d limped over the line, ensuring another season in the second tier, I was sick of it.
Charlton had gone from looking relatively safe, sitting comfortably nine points above the Championship relegation zone with seven games to play, to sweating as the other drop-zone candidates, one by one, did what they needed to do to extract themselves from the relegation conversation.
Despite watching Charlton since I was 10 and it being my main hobby, I wasn’t enjoying myself. The prospect of returning to League One after clawing our way out after five seasons playing the likes of Fleetwood, Crawley and MK Dons, was bleak and my nerves couldn’t take this amount of jeopardy.
It’s irrational behaviour, some would say absurd but a lot of the time I can’t bear to watch. This is supposed to be fun.
If there’s an away game with something riding on it, I often don’t even follow what’s happening. I turn my phone off completely. No notifications. No group chats. No idea what’s happening. Just silence and anxiety.
Then eventually I cave, switch the phone back on and discover we’re losing 3-0 at Stoke.
My problem, like most football fans, is that I care too much. I often wish I didn’t so that I could just say: ‘sod this’ and walk away. Here’s to an ordinary, midtable, blood pressure limiting 26/27 campaign. Come on you reds.
Gavin Billenness
Ipswich Town
Picture the scene. Jack Clarke sends Ipswich fans into a frenzy with an 87th-minute equaliser at Southampton. More than 3,000 Town supporters at St Mary’s — and thousands more watching on Sky — erupt.
One more goal and we’re back in the Premier League with a game to spare.
So where am I? Hiding in my six-year-old son’s bedroom. And instead of rushing bedtime so I can get downstairs to the TV, I’m deliberately dragging out his story until full time.
I’ve lived in London for nearly 20 years now, but I’ve never felt more homesick for Suffolk — or more hopelessly in love with Ipswich Town. I consume every article and podcast about them voraciously.
The problem is, on matchdays, I’ve become a complete nervous wreck. Basically: watching my beloved Town in Championship, scientifically speaking, like being chased by a lion. God knows what it’ll be like back in the top division next year.
Back in 2002, I took my dad to West Ham to watch Ipswich in a Premier League relegation six-pointer. He spent the entire second half standing with his back to the pitch at Upton Park. This wasn’t a bizarre attempt at a one-man Poznan, he just literally couldn’t face it!
At the time, I thought he was completely mad. Turns out he was actually the brave one. These days, I can’t even bring myself to go.
Martin Robinson
Arsenal
No Arsenal fan is going to gain much sympathy complaining that they’ve not had enough ‘fun’ this season – particularly when the club stands on the brink of wrapping up the most successful campaign in its history.
This is the dictionary definition of a Champagne problem. And yet, when asked me how much I’ve ‘enjoyed’ the season so far, the answer would be…not as much as you might expect? I should stress that this has nothing to do with aesthetics.
I couldn’t care less how many of our goals have come from set pieces, and you don’t live through five seasons of Skhodran Mustafi without coming to appreciate a steadfast defence.
The issue lies with the tension. The constant sense that anything other than three points is a step towards disaster. The volume of one-goal leads shepherded through double-figures stoppage time. Football has always been like this, but usually the real anxiety doesn’t kick in until the business end of the season. This year, it feels like it’s been there from week one.
The time, inescapably, is now. Hence the dread, the heightened pulse rate, the pit-of-the-stomach terror. And all during what may still prove to be the greatest season in our history. Football eh? Bloody hell.
George Wales
Swindon Town
When I got a season ticket in 2022 it wasn’t about the football. For the first time since the glory years of the mid-90s (back to back relegations mate, halcyon days ) I was going home. After three decades of largely watching my team on the road, interspersed with a handful of home games a season linked to special occasions or flagrant glory hunting, I was back.
My childhood supporting Swindon was never dull. The early decades of the 21st century were a little calmer, but still lively by most clubs’ standards. With Swindon, chaos was the norm.
But my return to regular Saturday afternoons at the County Ground coincided with one of the least eventful periods in our history – four straight seasons of fourth-tier football without so much as a play-off appearance.
And, until this year, I didn’t care that much. I came as I ever have to watching football without context. For me it was about the ritual, the familiarity, the friends and the odd good game. I wouldn’t say I was happy with mid-table, but it probably reflected up my priorities.
But this last season turned out to be different. Bossed by talkSPORT favourite Ian Holloway (he’s funnier when you don’t have to listen to him every week, trust me) and fired by the goals of Aaron Drinan we were top in September and second in February.
Automatic promotion was a tantalising prospect all season, the play-offs a seemingly guaranteed back-up plan. Until it wasn’t and a ninth placed finish was confirmed. Season over. Somewhere along the way I’d been dragged back in. Who’ve we got next? How are they getting on? Who have Salford, Chesterfield and Grimsby got? Is Ollie Clarke fit? It hurt, it still does. I’ll be back in August regardless. It’s where I belong.
Gavin Brown
Blackburn Rovers
The 2025/26 season marked the 150th anniversary of Blackburn Rovers. It was supposed to be special; a season for us to remember, one to make us proud of the famous blue and white halves.
Here’s what we got: Two abandoned games, a £90 anniversary kit released AFTER the anniversary, one sacked manager, an interim boss on a job-share, court papers served by our own kit manufacturers, seven long-term injuries, four wins at home, 22 losses, the third-lowest number of goals scored in the league, and an entire season spent flirting with relegation.
If it wasn’t for points deductions to Leicester City and West Brom, I’d be plotting my away day travel to the likes of Stevenage, Peterborough, and Luton Town.
But us fans saw this steaming pile of a season coming a mile off. Go back a year and we ended the 24/25 campaign one point shy of the play-offs. But the optics were bad when new contract offers to our best players went unsigned for months and the club’s CEO was quietly ushered out of the door (still to be replaced, by the way).
More times than not this season, Rovers angered me, frustrated me, ruined my weekends, and left me riddled with anxiety every time my phone vibrated to inevitably tell me we’ve conceded a goal. Am I excited to do it all over again for 26/27? You better believe I am. Surely things will get better, right? Right?
Rob Young
Tottenham Hotspur
It’s quite hard to believe the situation Spurs find themselves in. After the absolute ecstasy of the Europa League triumph in Bilbao last May, manyfans found themselves dreaming for once of a positive future. But just months after the trophy lift, in true Spursy style, the manager, the captain and even the chairman had departed.
What has followed has been nothing short of a mess. Thomas Frank’s eventual demise perhaps the only joyous moment for a fanbase sick of his horrific football.
I find myself absolutely dreading every game we play. It’s easily the worst part of the week, and with so much at stake for Spurs in the last few months- at times staring down the barrel of a first ever Premier League relegation, it has been a chore to watch.
‘All together always’ may be the slogan adopted by the club after an at best turbulent campaign, but the division between the board, players and fans has never felt greater.
Suddenly I’ve turned into a fan of whoever’s playing West Ham this week, and unsurprisingly that’s been more fun, albeit very stressful. I saw a post on social media this week that said ‘the key to happiness is to support teams that aren’t Spurs’ and it felt apt.
A horrible year for the club, and I’ll be delighted when it’s over.
Owen Barnard