It’s taken me a long time to realise that the world is fuzzy and complicated and that not all decisions are simple and binary. Take the hardest of them all – what to wear to a game in late August – is it warm enough for shorts and a t-shirt? Cold enough for a coat? Is there something in between? Should I layer up for all eventualities? The options are endless, and none seem particularly satisfactory.

Getting ready for yesterday’s game against Charlton, I looked out the window to see a persistent drizzle outside – ‘light coat’ I thought. By the time I left, it was bright sunshine and I was like Tony Adams in the 80s, training in a bin bag to sweat out the booze from the night before.

I was boarding ‘HMS Piss The League’ for the first time, but somehow it feels like we’ve played about three seasons already. First there was the familiar despair of the first two games, then the unfamiliar optimism of the next three. Now we’re in one of those hinterlands where it feels like if you allow yourself to be too hopeful, you’ll probably spoil it. 

I have no ability and even less desire to understand the mechanics of Manningball. Everything has the suffix ‘ball’ nowadays, like every political crisis is called something-gate. Moneyball was the original, now Bazball in cricket, last night I saw someone refer to West Ham as playing Moyesball. Portsmouth fans used to call Kenny Jackett’s football Jackettball which was quite funny because it seemed to refer to the science of being average. 

So, whether Manningball is a thing or not is something others can decide. It might simply be the overwhelming desire to talk in an unfathomable way. On Radio Oxford Jerome Sale and Eddie Odhiambo earnestly discussed the benefits of a double pivot, which may have been about football or perhaps how to manoeuvre a caravan in a tight corner on a bank holiday camping trip. I did wonder whether they could be absolutely certain they knew they both talking about the same thing.

One of the problems with optimism is that it encourages you to downplay your opponents. Like there’s some kind of Newton’s Fourth Law of Motion which determines that your forward motion must mean your opponents are going backwards. Charlton are a forgotten team in the division, for all their historical status, nobody talks about them either challenging for promotion or going down. Knowing quite what you’re going to get is hard. 

They didn’t seem to come with any particular identity, but they clearly weren’t going to be pushed around. They opened positively and created a couple of chances and there was a brief feeling that the results against Derby and Barnsley might have been a false dawn. It wasn’t all about them. It felt, at times, like there are scenarios where Manningball doesn’t yet have an adequate answer. It’s the right approach but the conclusions aren’t yet adequate; like the debate around the proper use of pronouns or safeguarding in Korean pop music.  

Early on Cameron Brannagan picked the ball up on the left and, eschewing the Robinsonian ‘Big Diag’, decided to meander infield, like a killer whale seeking food down a river estuary. A portal to a doomed future world opened up that only we could see; we knew what was coming, he didn’t. He was quickly dispossessed, and we scrambled to defend the chance he’d created for them. 

The opening goal was down to a simpler concoction of confidence and positivity; Tyler Goodrham seems to have entered that phase in his career where he can simply enjoy what he’s doing. There will be a time when he’s got to make cynical career decisions, but for now he can just terrify teams with his running. Watching the goal on TV was even better than being there, he picked the ball on the half-way line, ran and let fly. Less xG, more xGee-whizz.

After that, it felt like we let the system take over. There were moments and chances, but as Liam Manning said afterwards, we lacked urgency and bravery. These are both non-systemic nouns – if the system works, urgency and bravery shouldn’t be needed. The players have to learn they’ll need to try something a bit different at times, Manning needs to give them that space and perhaps even permission to do that.

So, there was perhaps an over-reliance on the science and we drifted into satisfying hum. They threatened little, but it was naive to think they wouldn’t at least have a chance. It eventually came, we were sloppy at a free-kick, then two defensive tackles failed to stop their advance and the ball fell to Alfie May to equalise. A series of unfortunate events. 

With new guidance around injury time, it’s increasingly difficult to judge risk in a game; you could get to eighty minutes and still have over twenty minutes to go. Throwing caution to the wind, stretching a game and leaving yourself vulnerable is now a whole new set of decisions. You can imagine last season sending Simon Eastwood up for a corner – something that happened way too frequently – only to find moments later that there was still fifteen minutes to go. 

So, our response to the equaliser was still fairly tame, but with five minutes to go (ten, in reality) in a move reminiscent of Harris’ winner against Carlisle, Rodriguez collected on the wing and played in Mills. Who knows whether the system clouds the instinct, but rather than slotting home, he got in a muddle, thankfully the ball squirmed to Goodrham to roll the ball into the net. 

Goodrham wheeled away to celebrate as Brannagan, Mills, Harris and Leigh climbed on top of him. We are a physically bigger team this year and inevitably Goodrham’s knees buckled under the weight. Let’s hope that’s not a metaphor.

It took a while to acknowledge that we were top of the league, and the chants were muted at best. We’ve been impressive in parts, but it seems a stretch to believe we’ve been the best team in the whole division. It’s probably healthier this way, we need to maintain a balance between having the confidence we can win and the fear that, without the right application, we won’t. Too much either way will damage our prospects.

I walked back to the car, the sun was struggling to peak through the benign grey clouds above, a gentle, familiar cold wind brushed against my cheek. Autumn is coming, and then winter, the season is truly upon us, and it’s going to be interesting.