In Oliver Sacks’ book ‘The man who mistook his wife for a hat’ the author discusses the impact of agnosia, a wide ranging neurological condition in which the brain can no longer interpret meaning from its experiences. 

This has bizarre consequences; there’s a man who doesn’t recognise his own legs, thinking they’ve been grafted onto his body, a woman whose body appears to behave independently from her thoughts and a man who cannot interpret what he sees, at one point trying to pull his wife’s head off thinking it’s his hat.

After the defeat to Burton, some people seemed genuinely surprised that their protests hadn’t been acted upon as if they’d somehow occupied the minds of the board. The idea that the board might have their own ideas on next steps seemed to be a complete shock.

While a consensus was established on social media, the club went into the final few days of the transfer window apparently unmoved by what may or may not be growing pressure on Karl Robinson. The signings of Konate and Smith both seemed encouraging, the loss of Taylor perhaps the biggest surprise of any transfer window we’ve had. 

What did it all mean? For me, it signalled that the board have retained confidence in the manager, at least for now. As he’s at pains to tell people; his job isn’t Championship Manager, he can’t buy and sell at will. Releasing your star striker might be a final act of folly, but I think more likely it’s a sign that he has the support to make big decisions and doesn’t particularly fear the consequences should it go wrong. 

I’m split; on one hand, Taylor is just the kind of striker you want; homegrown, likeable, capable, but any other striker who’d scored three goals all season would be an obvious choice to leave to free up a wage. Can we be, should we be hyper-logical about this?

The consequence against Barnsley was that without Taylor, Mousinho or Henry the team seemed weirdly unfamiliar. In a sense it was liberating, there wasn’t the dissonance between relying on the older stalwarts and knowing deep down that they weren’t going too deliver. This must be what naturism feels like; free of the constraints of convention and orthodoxy.

Except at the same time, we didn’t feel like us; we were too fluid, too loose, without an obvious plan? When Brannagan hobbled off, we suddenly looked like a team without a DNA; a fully formed body with no skeleton.

We were like one of those touring bands that carries a famous name, but doesn’t include any of its famous faces – Aziz Ibrahim’s Stone Roses Review or The Hits of Oasis featuring Gem Archer. Both strangely familiar and yet, at the same time, not. You know they’re going to do Wonderwall or I Am The Resurrection at some point, but the guitar solo is probably going to be done by a session sitar player they once used for a 1994 long forgotten b-side.

There were moments, Bodin got in and fired wide, Konate showed he might give us a bit more forward momentum. But, in return, they cut through us too often and too easily. Then, Sam Long had some kind of episode, firing a full-blooded back pass at hip height to Simon Eastwood who could only shank for a corner. It felt like that moment in Jurassic Park when the water in the glass vibrates, signalling the arrival of a tyrannosaurus rex; something bad was about to happen.

When the opening goal came, we were sat right behind the cross’ trajectory; I’ve never been so certain where the ball was going to end up, the moment it left Adam Philliips’ boot, if someone had caught the ball mid-flight, we’d have given the goal anyway it was so obvious where it was going to finish.

Truth is, though, by half-time we hadn’t been awful; high praise indeed. We’d prodded at their weaknesses, without really hurting them, but we weren’t outplayed. We haven’t been this season, we’ve just been incredibly average. Above all, though, there was a stirring sense of the inevitable; losing narrowly seemed like the best it would get.

On the hour, they sliced through us again, Herbie Kane received a crosss on the penalty spot and, almost out of politeness, passed it onto Nicky Cadden to score. They were playing with us.

There’s been a lot of talk about toxicity, but that wasn’t the overriding mood, it was more a sense of growing helplessness. Smith was introduced and almost instantly found himself clear with the keeper to beat. There he was, surrounded by no one; time stood still, just him and a day-glo orange goalkeeper. Which side would be pick? Left? Right? In the end, it was like he couldn’t decide and thought it best to try going over the top. The attempted lob plopped hopelessly into the keepers’ arms. He’d Rob Duffy’ed it. Narrative? Completed it mate.

Hopelessly hopeful long throws from Ciaron Brown and pedestrian crosses from Billy Boden were comfortably mopped up by the Barnsley defence until eventually Elliott Moore had had enough and broke the habit of a lifetime, attacking a cross to head in from 10 yards. It was difficult to raise a cheer.

He tried it again a few minutes later, connecting before it was flicked onto the bar. Suddenly, he was like a giraffe with a blood lust, careening through the Barnsley defence at every cross in the hope of grabbing an equaliser. The mood flicked, perhaps we could scrape something from this, despite how underserved that would be.

There was plenty of endeavour in the closing minutes; there always is, but there was no craft, our panache is injured, loaned out or too old.

There were calls for Robinson’s removal, but even that was half-hearted then a hollow silence during the descent down the stairs and into the night. Nobody expected to win and those expectations were met in full. Where now? 

Where indeed? Perhaps an acceptance of where we are; Robinson is here until the summer at least. As a squad and a club we’re in transition. It took a year to transition from Chris Wilder, via Gary Waddock to Michael Appleton’s full vision, and another year from Appleton via Clotet to Robinson. It’s unusual for a manager to oversee his own transition; they usually get cleared out with the rubble of the previous generation, so the odds of him steering us back into a better place must be stacked against him. For now, though, it’s about getting to the end of the season.

Saturday against Shrewsbury could be brutal, then we head to his old club, before hosting top of the table Plymouth at home, each game feels stacked with jeopardy. Wherever you stand on the issue of Robinson’s tenure, we should all be praying he does pull it around.