MARK Cooper may well have been feeling like the subject of the song “No-ones love you when you are down and out” after another defeat on Saturday.

The song tells of the fleeting nature of friendship and how when you lose your wealth your friends go the same way. Such a description could have applied to the manager’s situation on Monday morning as much as it did when it was written in the depression-era USA in the 1920s.

Certainly he seemed, until just a few weeks ago, like a man who had lots invested in the bank, his money working hard for him producing healthy dividends. Then a string of defeats saw the interest rate slip and his gilt-edged investments lose some of their sparkle.

Steve Claridge on the Football League Show on Saturday night seemed to be perplexed by (and at a loss to explain) Swindon’s sudden loss of form. I’m sure he is not alone on planet-pundit in finding the Town’s dip in form a shocking surprise.

All those who were writing that we were nailed on promotion candidates a few months ago are now starting to wonder if they got it wrong.

But what did they know? Why were we worrying? Massimo was waiting round the corner on Tuesday night like George Soros piling millions into the stock market. Luongo’s two goals very much kept the bank of Cooper afloat. The Australian helped us breathe a little more easily, at least until the weekend when another away trip will surely up the anxiety levels.

I have a feeling that the fight for that second automatic spot is going to be one that keeps going right until the end of the season, as the stock of each team rises and falls.

We all know that when we pay out for our tickets that it’s a gamble and a high-risk investment; perhaps the warning that “The value of your investment can fall as well as rise” is as appropriate to all big and small investors in our local team as it is in the finance sector. What started out as a gloomy week on the pitch and potentially of it got a lot better when we read that Mark Cooper had decided not to close his account here and open a new one in South Yorkshire, where surely turning a profit would have been much further out of his reach.

I’ll still carry on investing my cash and hope that Cooper & Co. pays a healthy dividend in early May.