Empty Saturdays

So it's Saturday and I'm already feeling the emptiness of a day without football and the Cobblers. Of course there are a lot of Premier League and playoff issues to keep the armchair fan happy over the coming weeks but the fact that I forgot that even the big boys were still playing for the English title this weekend says it all.

3pm will be strange today...I'm usually gripping my phone for live scores, nervous at Sixfields or a random ground around the country or sat in a pub watching Jeff Stelling et al along with the ticker at the bottom of the screen that can ludicriously have an effect on your mood for the rest of the day.

Talk of pre-season at Sixfields isn't doing a lot to change the mood and despite a war cry from the chairman I still think it a little to early to even think about next season after the despair of last weekend at Elland Road, a time that even now seems a million miles away as Leeds prepare for their playoff semi-final at Millwall. Good luck to the local police there.

Football on tv will have to make do until the end of May but every game will bring "what ifs," even the playoffs where we so ambitiously said we could end up at the start of this season. With David Cardoza talking of an immediate return to League One, the pressure is well and truly on Stuart Gray. I expect him to be given ten games to prove he's up for the job next season with so much expectation from the "highest wage bill in League Two."

But everyone will now be gunning for us as we go from being a small fish in a big pond to a rather large one in a small pond and we need to be ready to ensure that on the first Saturday after the end of next season in a year's time is one that we all spend relaxing and happy, in love with football again.