Due to the football-free weekend, my Saturday duties focussed on ferrying some post-GCSE teenagers to Reading Festival. While they headed off to do whatever it is teenagers do, I shuttled between bands I wouldn’t otherwise get to see. There was the Japanese bassline DJ Riria, the Pogues-lite Kingfishr, the soft rock singalong of Sombr, the Garageband rhymes of Dave and the endlessly entertaining Raye.

On Sunday, I was reduced to pick-up duties, the stories of the weekend had been an ever-evolving saga of spiked drinks, trashed tents, early departures, ruptured tendons and rain. After a grossly over-stated Chase and Status crisis and a third world level of 5G connectivity, I reached the pick up point to find the place looking like a war zone with mud splattered teenagers carrying broken camping gear while wearing are-you-sure-you’re-not-cold micro-hotpants, Paris San Germain shirts and bucket hats. 

I hadn’t been to the festival for years, it’s changed from its heavy metal origins and my own halcyon grunge and indie years into what’s now a teenage post-exam blowout. It should evolve, nobody needs to endure the Wonderstuff headlining for 25 years in a row but, I’ll confess, after the long absence and the initial novelty, I eventually grew tired of the bacchanalian chaos giving me a sense of what Simon Eastwood must be feeling right now.

The season is still finding its feet with no real rhythm to it. With nearly a month between our first and second home games, the triple header road trips to Stevenage, Huddersfield and Leicester has offered a daunting re-introduction to League One. Huddersfield was always going to be particularly difficult given they’ve had a couple of years to recover from their Championship adventures while not being dragged into the League One quagmire. Their time to thrive is now.

While we’ve found occasional rhythm in our opening games, we’re psychologically, physically and administratively stuttering. In the summer Aaron Ramsey talked about us having a clear identity, but we’re still finding clarity on that ambition.

Rather than an early grind to win the battle before winning the game, the first half was breathy, fast and loose. The ball ping ponged around playfully creating the illusion of two teams either caught up in a pre-coital courtship or utterly out of control. We threatened early on, while Simon Eastwood was called on to make a sharp save from close range. It was all good fun. 

Seven minutes into the second half, after some extended shadow play, the game finally engaged when Siriki Dembele danced into the box, bounced off Ryan Ledson and collapsed on the floor. Dembele may have subtly engineered the foul, but anywhere else on the pitch would have been a free-kick. Plus, it’s Ryan Ledson whose tackling has all the finesse of a giant panda wearing oven gloves trying to re-fuse a dishwasher.

Although the appeals were wafted away, the moment elevated us into a pocket of clean air that suggested maybe we could sustain a recovery against the odds. But, before we were able to take a lung-full of optimism, the moment evaporated as Bojan Radulovic slipped through to put the home side ahead.

We wobbled and creaked, introducing Gatlin O’Donkor and Leo Snowden. In theory at least, with an attack almost exclusively made up of academy players, it should have weakened us but they were quick to have an effect. Snowden found space on the right to slip the ball to O’Donkor who gambled to bundle in the equaliser.

In a moment of euphoric fugue, the O’Donkor, whose name the Sky commentator insisted on pronouncing as the exaggerated three syllable Oh-Donk-Or, grabbed the ball and headed back to the centre circle. While it had admirable purpose, perhaps we needed a calmer head to kill the game and momentum, even if it was ours. A point on the road would be fine, but O’Donkor’s surge of adrenalin had the opposite effect. It’s not his fault, there’s plenty of experience around him to control these moments.

Huddersfield catapulted forth, led by striker Joe Taylor who looks like he scrapes a living wrestling greased pigs at county shows in the midwest. After a couple of near misses he finally broke through to restore the lead, we’d been on par for four minutes.

Then it came; waves and waves of attacks cascading towards Eastwood’s goal. The keeper looked on despairingly, longing for his jet washer, allotment or whatever he used to do on a Saturday. Simple balls went beyond the defence, lunging last ditch tackles were admirable in their commitment, but an illustration we’d lost control. The high line, an act of bravado or naivety, was constantly breached until three minutes after his first, Taylor grabbed his second and their third to put the game beyond reach.

Despite a front-line that lacks of experience, we weren’t short of attacking intent and yet our defence seemed to collapse under the weight of its supposed pedigree. It’s one of the many riddles Ramsey will need to solve if we’re to find peace this season.

Despite shaving the knots and edges off the squad with the departures of Stan Mills and Brian De Keersmaecker, the result, though far from a disaster, has put our start back on edge. We may have removed the uncertainty of our past, but with Leicester on Saturday to come, the future remains far from clear.