Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen

A 5-1 home loss to the side directly below us, at a key point of the season, hurts. It doesn’t however, mean we’ve blown it.

Phil Parkinson summed it up perfectly in the outstanding post-match interview Chris Mallaband conducted on the Wrexham Live video stream.

“We mustn’t let this result define us.”

He is so right.

We were under par and outplayed. However, when opponents of that calibre, who have just beaten Arsenal let’s not forget, play like that, it’s no disgrace to lose though.

We made errors for all the goals, and that’s hard to bounce back from.

We also had a series of key moments which went against us, hitting the post twice at key junctures and conceding an unnecessary third goal when we were threatening to take control of the game and make it 2-2.

At that point of the match it felt eerily like the Sheffield United and Ipswich wins, as we responded to a whirlwind start by our opponents to wrest ourselves spectacularly back into contention.

I’m not trying to claim it was a hard luck story. Southampton were better than us, without question. The pace and movement of their attacks and the way they shifted the ball around so beautifully would have been a joy to watch if we hadn’t been the opponents.

However, the two late goals did add a cruel twist to the scoreline, and we mustn’t forget that it was just one game. If we’d dominated and lost to a last minute own goal, the outcome would have been the same in terms of points won. We need to put it behind us and attack the rest of the season.

It’s important to be able to bounce back from such setbacks and to be fair this is something we have consistently done under Phil Parkinson. It has become part of our personality as a club.

Putting bad moments behind you is a key part of being a footballer and I should know because I failed to do so!

Maybe I can explain my perspective like this.

When I was a teenager I conceded the worst goal ever let in at the SToK Cold Brew Coffee Stand end. My centre back hooked the ball back towards me harmlessly. It was in the good old days when goalkeepers could pick up back passes.

However, on this equation I chose not too!

The ball went through my hands and into the net. It was horrific!

The thing is, there was another reason why this happened apart from my incompetence. Earlier in the game, I had conceded a goal which wasn’t really my fault but it annoyed me and played on my mind. A good footballer, and especially a good goalkeeper, will put that in the past and move on.

I was not a good goalkeeper.

I was aware of what happened and conscious of the fact that although it wasn’t my fault, people might think it was. It got into my head and affected my confidence, meaning that I then went on to commit a genuine goalkeeping atrocity.

The point I’m trying to make is that our players will have experienced setbacks before and the reason they are still playing at a high level is because they are resilient. They bounce back from disappointment by putting it behind them and kicking on.

Obviously, they will not deny that it happened. However, apart from learning the lessons from the Southampton game to ensure they do not repeat those mistakes, it is in the past.

They can do nothing to change it, and fretting over it is pointless. Leave that to us fans!

So, to be clear, we still have five games left. We are within spitting distance of the playoffs with 15 points to play for. Would you have been upset by that scenario at the start of the season? I thought not.

We go again on Sunday. I was saying to people before the match on Tuesday that it was not must-win. It would have been wonderful if we had been victorious, but in football we talk too regularly about 6-pointers and games which you can’t afford to drop points in.

There are plenty more twists and turns to come before the season ends, and frankly it’s still in our hands. Add 15 points onto our current total. Would that get us up into the top six? Of course it would.

So, starting Sunday, we begin the run-in, and run-ins are something that Phil Parkinson’s teams do exceptionally well.

This time last year we played Bristol Rovers at home and massively underperformed, dropping 2 points. It was a blow, and the consensus was that we had fatally damaged our push for promotion. We would have to settle for a playoff spot, and the chance of going straight up was gone.

We all know how that turned out!

There are plenty of points to play for, plenty of obstacles for rivals to trip over, and we’ll see where we are at the end of the season.

However, even if it isn’t in the playoff zone, this will remain the greatest season in our history in terms of our overall national position.  In 1978 we finished 15^th in the second tier, which meant we were the 37^th best team in the country if you laid the final positions of all the divisions end to end.

We are currently 7^th in the second tier, which means we’re the 27^th best in the country. Even if we lost every game between now and the end of the season, we are guaranteed to improve the achievements of 1978.

The direction of travel remains relentlessly upwards.

So, I know you don’t want to hear this, but keep some perspective, don’t get carried away and, like Phil Parkinson’s team, press the reset button on Sunday.

Let’s do this!