A little bit of history repeating
28 Dec 2019 11:00 am, by YorkshireSquare
In the minds of many Leeds fans there echoes that old song from Shirley Bassey, "A little bit of history repeating" They look to past years and observe the poor performance during the Christmas period, the failure to strengthen during the January transfer window, and all this compounded by either suspensions, banns, or injuries.
This generates a mindset amongst the players and the fans of a sense of deja vu, or the eternal groundhog day that it is our fate to continuously repeat the mistakes of the past and we are trapped in an eternal loop that will keep us in the Championship forever. These fears and worries seep into the subconscious of everyone and temper what we perceive and how we behave.
Nobody wants to be trapped in this deterministic hell from which there is no escape. Coming so close to gaining the victory only to have it snatched away at the last moment. This makes for a good documentary but the literary device being used is the tragedy, where the heroic character (Bielsa/Radrizzanni/Bamford) has one fatal flaw that leads to their downfall and destruction... if you flip the coin over the opposite of tragedy is comedy and the rule of thumb is that there is a triumph over unpleasant circumstance, resulting in a happy or successful conclusion.
Talking about coins and probabilities Tom Stoppard wrote a play called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. The play opens with them betting on coin flips. Rosencrantz, who bets heads each time, wins ninety-two flips in a row. The extreme unlikeliness of this event according to the laws of probability leads Guildenstern to suggest that they may be held in the grip of "supernatural forces".
And all the doom and gloom merchants when they review past seasons must feel that if we can't get out of this league then we are in the grip of some great conspiracy planned and directed by the EFL, who in collusion with a whole host of referees thwart all our chances for getting promoted.
But as Guildenstern noted it is against the rules of probability that the same events continue to happen over and over again and again, so take heart my friends the equation has so many variables. Could be Jack Clarke gets loaned out to a team whose sole purpose is to take points off the chasing pack and allow Leeds to progress. That is the way tragicomedies work... the disaster turns out to be a blessing in disguise.
Exit stage right to the Premier League.
Content by rab_rant from our Birmingham City v Leeds Utd match thread.