IT’S HARD, as a Swindon Town fan, to find much perspective today.

After the loss against Port Vale and with a balsa-thin squad, my eyes are cast firmly downwards.

Combined with the home defeat by Barnsley and the club’s refusal to spend in the transfer window, my hands have been firmly shrugged into my pockets.

No, today feels like one of those LS Lowry paintings of stick men plodding under slate-grey skies: grim, bleak and utterly flat.

The logical part of my brain isn’t helping either.

I know the club sits seven points away from the relegation positions and that our form is very much upward, but I don’t feel like dealing in facts right now.

I also know that every team who buys in January overpays for mediocrity.

I know that playing the likes of young Jordan Young, Lee Marshall and Jermaine Hylton will help them develop.

I also know that Jordan Turnbull pulling a hamstring getting off the bus was a freak injury.

But that isn’t helping.

I don’t want to admit that this season is already ‘gone’, no fan of any club does.

I know that we can’t go up and won’t go down.

I know it is better to plan and save for next season, rather than worry about this mediocre one. It leads to a nasty conclusion: that short-term fixes and loans are fine.

But I’m finding that hard to swallow.

In fact, we all struggle to make sensible predictions of the future; it is why gambling exists.

When Ray Winstone’s projected Zeppelin-head starts growling odds at us during commercial breaks we think only of the winnings, not the chance that the game won’t end 13-6 at precisely the same time as alien life is discovered in Elton John’s salad drawer.

It is the same reason that some people would like to see Nile Ranger back at Swindon, even if he would notch as many appearances at the magistrates’ court than on the pitch.

As supporters we all rely on hope - unreasoned dumb hope.

It is just that maybe it more logical to put that hope into next season, not this.

It just might take another day.