15 Thoughts Guaranteed To Terrify All Die-Hard Football Fans

Anterior cruciate ligament tear. Vodafone knows you don't even need to be told what that means...

1. The chairman "speaking out".

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It's three days before the transfer deadline. You're on the verge of signing a new £10 million striker. Then the chairman pops up on the radio claiming the striker doesn't have any cartilage left in his knee. Deal off.

2. Plans.

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Plans are all well and good. Until there's a crucial cup semi-final replay on a Wednesday night. And you can't watch the game because you foolishly booked theatre tickets six months ago.

(And now everyone's mad because you told Dave to call with goal updates.)

3. Wearing the shirt of your most hated rival.

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A true fan wouldn't even entertain the prospect, let alone stake a wager on it.

4. European football (on a Thursday night).

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You think you want it. Football on the continent – it sounds so glamorous! But suddenly, it's January and you're balancing a relegation battle with a trip to Latvia.

5. Non-contact injuries.

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As a fan, there's few things worse than seeing a player go down with nobody around them. Utterly heartbreaking.

6. Second season syndrome.

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It's like chicken pox. You know it's coming and you can't avoid it. It's just something you have to go through in order to make yourself stronger.

7. Hope.

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Even worse. You think it'd be knocked out of you by the time you grow up, but nope – gets you EVERY TIME.

8. When a big club starts sniffing around your players...

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Uh oh. We've been through this before. Cue eight weeks of transfer speculation.

9. ...only for deadline day to pass and nothing happens...

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By this point, you've already prepared yourself emotionally for their exit. You may not like it, but you've made peace with it.

And then they don't actually go anywhere. (Probably because football clubs still insist on doing business through fax machines.)

10. ...leaving you with a disgruntled player tweeting about how he'll never play for your club again.

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"He said what about the chairman?!"

11. "Doing a Leeds."

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Well, at least we have financial fair play these days, right?

12. Your club gets taken over by a billionaire oligarch and "loses its soul".

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Speaking of Financial Fair Play, let's face it, we're all such purists that we'd just hate for our club to become a title-winning, European juggernaut. Where's the romance in that?

We'll take mid-table mediocrity and the odd flirt with relegation, thank you very much.

13. Summer 2017.

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No football for nearly three months. What are you supposed to watch, the cricket?!

14. Having your franchise move to Milton Keynes.

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56 miles up the M1... 56!

15. Being the last person to know.

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Goals, injuries, transfer speculation, medicals, failed medicals, two-footed horror tackles, manager outbursts, touchline bust ups, dressing room scuffles, players driving round the city handing out wads of cash...

...and you missed it because you had no phone signal?

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