My father-in-law once had a hernia operation, to aid his recovery, he was advised to buy some loose-fitting cotton boxer shorts. Being a man firmly of the y-front generation, he ‘couldn’t be doing with them’, with his bits swinging all over the place. 

A Marks and Spencer three-pack that had been bought for him remained unopened. When his recovery was complete and it was time to re-house the unused underwear, it appeared one day on our kitchen worktop; a present to me, someone fully up to speed with state-of-the-art undercrackers.

But I couldn’t bring myself to wear them, I couldn’t even pierce the cellophane of the wrapper. Even though they’d never been worn, they were someone else’s underwear, I couldn’t go around wearing my father-in-law’s brand new but second-hand underpants, we might as well spend the day bashing together our testicles like schoolboys playing conkers.

The aim of any football discussion is to find objectivity; the conclusive proof of something, it can be the only explanation why anyone gets excited about xG ratings. If you were to strip back the travails of the last few weeks then, in fact, getting three points from a sequence of Ipswich, Wycombe, Burton and Barnsley, may not be as bad it looks on paper. The only surprise was that we snatched the points against Ipswich at the start of that sequence, and not Burton in the middle of it.

It’s been a hard run, but Shrewsbury offered something a bit more achievable. A mid-table grind, which could elicit three points or as a minimum, avoid defeat. One of Brinyhoof’s observations of this season is how lower-league the division looks in comparison to recent years. Last year we and others played with a fluidity that is largely absent. This year it really feels like the quality has been gutted from the division. Perhaps it’s post-pandemic, with all the good players at this level getting past it and not being replaced. Perhaps, as Karl Robinson rightly says, the World Cup messed up the loan market, so the quality from above hasn’t been available.

As anticipated, the game was an unqualified slog, plenty of effort and thunder, very little panache. Like a simpleton trying to earn money charging £1 to be punched in the face. We are in a rush to end our sequence of defeats, ploughing into challenges and crowds of players, but nobody was prepared to put their foot on the ball and take the time to find the pathway to redemption.

We looked more balanced but no more threatening; goals and chances are not created anymore, they come as a by-product of doing as much rushing about as possible. It’s like a Karl Robinson post-match interview, speed being sacrificed for clarity. We’re drilling holes in our back garden in the hope of striking oil; it’s probably not going to happen, but it’s worth a try when you’re desperate.

Of course, all the usual cliches stand; you don’t score, you don’t win; you’re always vulnerable etc. etc. Shrewsbury are in good form, sitting a solid ninth, we weren’t outplayed but there was always going to be a chance.

The moment the ball hit the back of the net, a chorus of ‘We want Robbo out’ struck up over the cheers of the Shrewsbury fans, like Nathan Cooper had started experimenting with a macabre version of goal-music. Up until that point, the big narrative; the future of Robinson had been largely absent. The performance had been OK, the energy in the stadium was good, perhaps there was a hope that we wouldn’t need to talk about ‘The Issue’. Despite everything, these aren’t the protests against previous managers which would sail across the atmosphere long before we were behind. The squad, the formation, the effort was all there, only when the defeat looked inevitable did things turn.

For the remaining quarter of an hour though, the confidence drained from us. At one point Djavan Anderson picked the ball up, ran forwards about six paces, appeared to lose heart in the futility of existence and passed it into nothingness. It was beyond pathetic. Lewis Bate and Tyler Goodrham battled away, but like squaddies from the First World War bravely going over the top only to face a hail of bullets. They shouldn’t be in a position where we’re looking to them to set the tone for the whole performance.

There was no comeback, no Alamo, no Hail Mary. Without Brannagan who did we think would make that breakthrough? The sight of Simon Eastwood going up for a corner is an increasingly frequent final act which has yet to pay any dividends, apart from to remind everyone just how desperate we’ve become.

The final whistle went, and the inevitable chants returned; when the herd moves, it moves. You can debate whether you want Robinson to stay or not, you can argue the merits of a system in which the manager is the single point of failure, but the reality is that, like the unopened boxer shorts; any objectivity and reality has been consumed by the narrative.

We might break our losing sequence next week; it will come to an end sooner rather than later. But for how long does that stem the discussion over Robinson’s future? We have Plymouth, Sheffield Wednesday and Derby still to come at home, as well as John Mousinho and Portsmouth. We are going to drop more points and then it all floods back again. It becomes all that anyone ever talks about, which impacts players, fans, the media. The club’s stated goals – stadium progress and the play-offs – evaporate into the background as everyone convinces themselves of what they already believe. It’s hard to imagine a scenario now where Robinson’s future isn’t being discussed.

His saving grace at this stage, as was identified on Radio Oxford, is that the owners who will obviously be involved in any decision, will have the benefit of separation. They won’t feel it like we are. In the great portfolio of their concerns, the manager may not be that big an issue despite everything. Plus, there’s no obvious alternative; the search for both Chris Wilder and Pep Clotet’s replacements took weeks and in both cases, already listless ships sank. Despite the current doldrums, nobody needs that instability.

I don’t dislike Robinson, he shouldn’t be defined by his low points, if he goes, he should go with our best wishes and thanks. Too many people conflate recent results with who he is as a person. While I think replacing him out of anger is a mistake, it’s hard to ignore the incessant drone of debate about his future. For me, that’s the things that we’re really trying to get rid of here. Only two things makes that go away; an improbable return to such good form that it sends us into the summer with a renewed vigour, or that he leaves and we start anew.