When Wycombe Wanderers beat us in the 2020 Play-Off Final, Wycombe left-back Joe Jacobson stood on the pitch side, pumped with jubilant adrenaline and said, “Every game will be a cup final next season, and we will enjoy every minute of it.” 

You can’t blame him, the club had achieved the unthinkable. They would be Championship players, a level that Jacobson nor many of the Wycombe players had ever seen before.

Presumably, though, there was some point during the seven consecutive defeats they suffered at the start of the following season when his commitment to enjoying every minute began to waiver just a little.

The comedown after a play-off win is brutal. Without doubt it’s the best way to get promoted; it’s a high that’s way beyond the satisfaction that comes from the grinding consistency needed to go up automatically. But, you can’t stay that high forever, a sense of deflation will come eventually. What’s even more crushing is that chances are you’re likely to come down from a position of ultimate triumph into pit of unrelenting struggle for survival.

Maybe it was the blanket of rain we woke up to on Saturday morning or the familiar slate grey skies of a coming winter, but long before kick-off against Blackburn, yesterday felt like we were starting to move into a new reality.

This is our weekend now for the next 10 months, week after week, home and away, game after game. Blackburn represent as middling a side as the Championship offers. They are the common man, the missionary position, the Bristol Rovers, Lincoln or Shrewsbury of the second tier. They have pride and history, but their broad ambition is to stay where they are.

And yet, it’s still hard for us to associate with them. They’ve spent eighteen seasons in the Premier League, including when we were grubbing around in the Conference, they’ve won every major domestic trophy, they are one of the grand old clubs of English football.

It’s hard to argue that we’ve not been ambitious. We’re having a decent go at setting ourselves up to compete this season. When a player like Marcus McGuane is surplus to requirements, you know that you’re a stronger beast than you were. But, it’s still going to take some time to be compared to even the most vanilla Championship clubs.

Despite our aggression in the transfer market, the loss of Cameron Brannagan and Elliott Moore made us feel a bit threadbare going into the game. Perhaps that was spiritual rather than literal, but maybe it shows that the ambitions are just seeds that have yet to take root.

There’s been plenty from the first three games to suggest opponents will need to take us seriously and hopefully that’ll mean we’ll catch a few people out. Against Blackburn we were comfortably in it even before Mark Harris’ breathtaking moonshot volley arced into the top corner from 30 yards.

Harris may have scored the goal of the season, but like Peter Leven scoring from the halfway line or that time Johnny Mullins was labelled The Magnet because he once scored two goals from corners, these things are moments not trends.

The equaliser moments later was shambolic, like a counter-balance to the wonder to Harris’ goal. We defended like a class of nursery school children trying to avoid a wasp, everyone looked terrified, nobody wanted to engage with the ball and thump it clear. The winner showed the kind of quality that most teams possess at this level as standard. It wasn’t inevitable, but again, our performance wasn’t enough.

The achievement of reaching this level and the memories of Wembley will remain like the warming embers of an open fire for some time yet. We will praise performances and admire the struggle. But, the stark reality is that effort and ‘encouraging signs’ will often not be enough, we will need to find ways to squeeze points out from these situations if we want to survive. 

The key, it seems, is what shape we’re in as we reach the hour mark. Against Norwich we had a two-goal cushion and a disillusioned opponent, against Coventry and Blackburn we went into the final third of the game level but starting to wilt, ultimately we coming away with nothing on each occasion. 

It was a similar challenge when playing the best sides in League One. Outside the top four or five League One sides, it’s possible to pressurise, cajole, harry and scare sides for 90 minutes. Against the top teams we frequently buckled late in the game, the teams that succeeded in that division were the ones who could keep turning the vice. In the Championship, every team can do that for 90 minutes. 

And while this is a truth we need to come to terms with on the pitch, it’s also something that will require a change of mindset off the pitch too. Aside from the comical collapse of the Robinsonian empire in 2023, it’s a long time since avoiding relegation was considered an aspirational aim. Those of us who remember playing at this level will remember plenty of frustrating times under Brian Horton and Denis Smith. We didn’t know it at the time, and moaned plenty, but a 17^th place finish with two or three away wins all season was quite an achievement in the circumstances.

Faith has yet to waiver, the sense of unity remains. It’s still very early days and we’ve been given a tricky opening with two away games in a row. I think most people would have been satisfied with three points from our opening three games and there’s latitude to strengthen the squad further while the transfer window remains open. If Joe Jacobson enjoyed every minute of Wycombe’s seven consecutive defeats, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a smile on our face.

Home games against Preston and Stoke will tell us more, these are the ones where points are needed more than performances. But, it’s reasonable to say, the grind is coming. We will go into more games hoping for something but expecting nothing. We need to find ways of winning or sneaking a point, but we also need to find ways of losing well and not letting it eat at our soul.