My, this is embarrassing. We wait three months – plus those tortuous extra 9 days – for our season to begin, then promptly find ourselves nestled amongst the bottom one teams in the table after being torn apart by a bunch of blasted kids. Thank heavens for the fixture-list and its remaining 37 entries.

Last year was pretty clear cut in the Conference North, Alfreton were pretty much definitely going up despite having a ridiculous backlog of games, the play-off places were fairly clear early on and Redditch were dropping like a stone from around February time, but this season it looks set to be a bit closer at both ends of the table and closer still in the middle.

For Spurs supporters, matches like this evening's Real Madrid at the Estadio Santiago Bernabau are, perhaps, what have been missing for all these years. Yet Spurs have cause for trepidation this evening. Their recent form has been that of a squad running out of steam, and Chelsea have been allowed to build up a five point cushion in fourth place over them in the Premier League.