It's not easy being a Norwich supporter. No doubt, a passing Luton fan, or even a Leicester season-ticket holder, would tell Stan to think himself lucky.
But what do they know.
Of course, all things being equal, following our historic city home and away is better than, say, turning up at a half-empty Ewood Park week in week out, or dreaming – as all Rochdale supporters must do – of ever reaching the old Division Three/Division Two/Division One.
Even so, at 4.50pm on Saturday, 8 November, 2008, Stan felt absolutely down-and-out.
It's one thing watching gutless defeats. You lose and you know why; you take it on the prominent Norfolk chin.
But to actually play well and come away with only a share of the spoils because of (a) the most ridiculous bit of defending since, well, against Derby last month, (b) a soft sending off, and (c) a sudden fear of shooting descending over the entire team in the second-half, is extremely hard to take.
While not exactly robbed, we'd at least forgotten to take the ?20 out of the cashpoint before walking away.
Of course, Norwich being Norwich, we contributed much to our own downfall.
Quite what Jon O and Marshall were doing to let Chris Brown (never should have sold him…) score in the opening three minutes Stan cannot say.
Similarly, why – and Saint Glenn will kill old Stan for this – Crofty was substituted just as City were building up even more momentum remains a mystery up there with Worthy's tendency to bring on Henderson to 'shore things up' in the Premiership.
In this case, the flow flopped and the initiative was lost. All of which was compounded by Rusty's apparently innocuous but in fact devastatingly petulant display of woolly-gloved fisty-cuffs.
One minute later and Preston equalise, leaving Stan to ruminate about Saint Glenn's recent comments along the lines of: it's never easy against ten-men. If a man is sent off, all you have to do is go one up front and get ten behind the ball. Unfortunately, such logic does not seem to apply to our lot.
And so, the pain continues.
Our lamentable away form and stuttering home form now means we really do need to beat Swansea to stay out of the bottom three.
As you should know, Stan wholly endorses Roy Keane's views about pundits in general.
Accordingly, Stan also thinks Keano spot-on in ridiculing the tendency to see every last game as the benchmark and every forthcoming game as the 'most important ever'.
Assessing football outside the heat of battle, as with everything else, must be done in the round, in context, and with as much objectivity as possible.
To that end, our failure to beat Preston evened up our lucky victory over Doncaster and reaffirmed our place as a bottom-third team within the Championship.
How we move on from this, Stan can only cling to his blind faith in all things Norwich City.
But in a world where the likes of Gartside are hoping to kill the people's game stone dead, such spiritual optimism may well count for little.
Like Stan says, supporting Norwich is difficult at the moment and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. That siad, at least there's the FA Cup to look forward to …
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