I met my friend and fellow Walsall supporter, Paul Trivett, in The Bell, Walsall, ahead of the home game with Macclesfield on Saturday 14 December. We discussed the differences between faith and hope, the relationship between hope and football as opposed to hope and University life, the ways in which institutions peddle hope, and the almost-impossibility of building coherent lines of resistance and struggle from where we are. Because, frankly, building such lines just isn’t what people want, or work they wish to undertake. Instead, we fixate upon the limited horizons of what we can imagine will help us to survive in the world.

And I just thought we were going to discuss away games we had loved, our favourite football podcasts, and the inability of football managers to find systems of play that matched the players they had at hand.

As usual, the music is provided by Rae Elbow and the Magic Beans.