The Nature Of Reality — Square Ball 5/2/26

Not panicking, honest

Written by: Calum Archibald

A relegation battle has been on the cards since the moment we sealed promotion last season. Expectation was clear. Stay up through a gritty, battling, physical style aided and abetted by a recruitment model that prioritised hard work, good characters and, well, size.

So, you’d think we as a fanbase would be adequately prepared for what was to come, a brutal grind of season filled with ups and downs, as the song goes?

And yet.

Anxiety-fuelled nightmares still plague my every waking moment, pondering over permutations of every gameweek while West Ham suddenly turn into a competent side capable of pulling off three wins in a row with a London derby victory at Stamford Bridge.

Then about half an hour later, everything is okay again and order is restored.

There’s no doubt the game against Forest is as big as they come. It’s a chance for us to take points off a rival while extending our lead over 18th before they head to Burnley. It’s the proverbial six-pointer in all its glory, under the lights live on Sky at Elland Road. It’s a fixture and a scenario we spent sixteen years pining for, hoping we’d get the chance just to be part of the furniture again.

But actually having to live through a relegation is a form of CIA-approved torture because the only thing that matters is the outcome, no matter how much misfortune with injuries you have or how many hard luck stories you tell. The league table is judge, jury and executioner.

Elland Road under the lights has become a bit of a phenomenon outside of West Yorkshire this season. In fact, it’s been a bit of a thing for Farke’s entire stint at Elland Road, in the right conditions.

You can reel off plenty of special nights with incredible atmospheres, from the comebacks against Leicester and Sunderland to this season’s wins over Everton and Chelsea, plus the draw against Liverpool that encapsulates the chaos that LS11 thrives on.

Now, we’d all much rather we didn’t do things the hard way by conceding first, doing anything daft or getting involved in a basketball match – but that is ultimately the situation we do our best stuff in.

You have to live in the chaos to revel in the chaos.

Again, the reality of a relegation battle means that a home fixture against a struggling Notts Forest, led by Sean Dyche, becomes a must-win game that you spend all week pontificating.

I dream of a day when we can approach this sort of fixture with a sense of normality, rather than existential dread. That, though, is the nature of a relegation battle that could bring untold joy and a sense of a new beginning if we can drag ourselves over the line this year.

There is still some hope that we might pull away and make all of our lives a little bit more comfortable in the coming weeks, but West Ham’s recent revival and us hovering just over one point per game probably tells you that there’s a way to go in this yet.

Logic tends to go out of the window when you’re doom mongering, like I was on the verge of last Saturday tea time. West Ham will now win six in a row, while we’ll barely win a point in the rest of our games. Our heads have gone; they’ve got their tails up.

None of which is helped by Leeds United’s propensity to make the impossible become possible, something we’ve excelled at in recent years. But if we are to take the logical approach, the most likely outcome this season is for all teams involved in the fight to continue pretty much as they have been.

We’re two-thirds of the way through the season, give or take, which means that the patterns at play are pretty settled. Deviation one way or the other can happen, but extremes are unlikely at this point. We’re not likely to suddenly win five in a row, nor are West Ham, Forest or Crystal Palace.

There will be individual results that surprise everyone and the hope is that falls our way more often than anyone else’s, which is something we have the opportunity to do in the coming weeks with games against Chelsea, Man City and Villa to come.

What is for sure, though, is that while a win against Nottingham Forest is all I’m dreaming of and more, that high will only last until Burnley vs West Ham kicks off the following afternoon. And even a positive result there will only keep me going until Leeds arrive at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday.

The anxiety never does go away, it merely takes a mini-retirement (cheers, Red Nev) for a few days until the next time something good, bad or okay might happen.

It’ll all be okay, though, won’t it? Won’t it?