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Parents who’ve forgotten how exhausting young children are occasionally stop you and say: “The days are long, but the years are short.” Some reel – which is where I get all of my information these days – altered it slightly to say: “The days are long, but the weeks are also long,” which feels more accurate when you’re on your hands and knees on the kitchen floor picking up sticky rice with a wet wipe.

There are fewer saccharine Insta posts about football seasons feeling so arduously long and yet suddenly over at the same time. “Ah don’t you remember when it was the Carabao Cup first round – so cute.” This catches me out every year. Perhaps no one else is blindsided by football season by stealth, but here we are again: just a handful of games remaining to decide everything – and I’m not entirely sure how we’re at this stage.

It feels like both yesterday and a lifetime ago that I was sitting in a sports bar in Old Street feeling enthused about Spurs (my big team who win things). They may have lost that Super Cup to Paris Saint-Germain in a Spursy manner – and the novelty of a Kevin Danso long throw wore off pretty fast – but there was a pragmatist in charge. A few weeks and a 2-0 win at the Etihad later and there was a tiny part of my brain thinking Thomas Frank might win us the title. We never learn.

And then there’s the weird excitement/indifference every lower-league fan gets as their social media account keeps announcing signings you’ve never heard of. All these strangers – Louis Appéré, Dom Ball, Ben Knight – now feel like old friends, in as much as you can be friends with someone you’ve watched running around on CUFC TV in the middle of the night for nine months.

Now suddenly Cambridge United have fallen out of the automatic promotion places at just the wrong time, while Tottenham have their third manager and could well be in the relegation zone by the time they kick off at the Stadium of Light on Sunday.

So I am left with a dual panic, once again asking whether any of this is giving me any pleasure – in a spare moment staring at the League Two table and mentally adding the four points we’ve dropped in the past two games. If Ian Holloway is as honourable as I know he is, he’ll give us two points at the end of the season after we battered Swindon 1-1 at the Abbey last Thursday; their 90th-minute equaliser wasn’t even a shot. And then on Monday our keeper, Jake Eastwood, made perhaps his first mistake of the season in the last minute at Cheltenham.

Now it’s fourth v third on Saturday as we entertain Notts County, before going to the leaders, Bromley, on Thursday night. It is too stressful a week. We’re on the eve of the apocalypse and I’m studying the run-in of second-placed MK Dons (two tricky games out of four if you’re interested).

In between that, I have to pivot to the agony of watching Spurs, who are objectively the worst team in the Premier League at the moment. The atrophy of the last few months. The failure for everyone to really understand that they may be in the Championship next season. Even writing it down, there’s part of me that doesn’t believe it. It’s not a thing that happens.

But beyond the ethics of the Roberto De Zerbi appointment, and his necessary, if not totally satisfactory, apology over his Mason Greenwood comments, his record doesn’t scream instant impact: one win in his first 13 at Palermo, none in his first nine at Benevento, two points from his first five games at Brighton. Perhaps I’m cherrypicking the bad ones.

Lewis Dunk has been quoted a lot since De Zerbi’s appointment: the Italian’s first two weeks at Brighton were “baffling” or “carnage” or a “really hard transition”. I’ve only just got over one of James Maddison’s legs being half the size of the other – not the first time I’ve possibly lacked perspective – and now it is Sunderland away. It is hard to pinpoint why part of me believes we’ll get three points. But it’s there.

It’s reassuring to know that fans across the UK are experiencing the same anxieties. On the latest Guardian Football Weekly, Arsenal fan Philippe Auclair previewed the Bournemouth game: “There will be pain, and then more pain, and then people with their hands over their faces” – and that’s the best team in the country. The early kick-off on Saturday just means more weekend to be annoyed about Evanilson’s scuffed equaliser midway through the second half.

What about West Ham – a perma-panic team. Or if not panic, just angsty frustration. They are improving, but Wolves at home on Friday could be a disaster. Can any West Ham fan be looking forward to this game?

Liverpool fans panicking about finishing below Everton. Chelsea fans panicking about whatever project their project is. Go down the leagues, it’s the same. Anyone on the brink of promotion or the playoffs or relegation is stressed – in Ipswich, in Middlesbrough, in Oxford, in Leicester, in Harrogate and Barrow and Newport and Tranmere.

Who’s actually enjoying things right now? PSG and Bayern fans are probably happy with what they’re being served. Coventry, Lincoln, Roy Hodgson? Is that the trick: be in your late 70s, stick on some shades and get a couple of wins for Bristol City? It’s a niche Blues Brothers remake.

But you can’t have joy without all of this. And we all know the deal, and the reality that for most of us there will be the panic, the angst, the frustration and you won’t get the joy at the end of it all either. You can only blame/thank* whoever forced this sport upon you.

*Delete as appropriate depending on the league tables in May