"You are in the game for nights like these," affirmed the former Liverpool player and manager. If ever a chap looks in need of cheering up, it is Souness, and his insistence that he was going to enjoy the moment rather than get into an immediate fret about how his side would stay in the top flight next season was entirely justified if unlikely.Because for every "night like these" the beleaguered football managers of the land endure so many nights, days, weeks, months and years that are not like these. And as the musical-chairs scramble reaches its frenetic climax this weekend the railways (strikes permitting) and motorways of the land will be dense with distracted supporters mentally rehearsing every possible permutation of results.If that's how it is for the fans, think what it must be like for the managers approaching the forthcoming fixtures possessed by a vortex of anxiety. But what, you may ask, does a vortex of anxiety look like? I can only say that I was recently in the presence of one, and it looked like this.The Birmingham City press room is not an uplifting environment. A small selection of Eighties-style chairs offer seating for a relatively lucky few. There is good and bad news about the venerable television set on a wall bracket it is colour; but it doesn't work. Above, polystyrene ceiling tiles betray new evidence of mould.To this little enclave last Saturday two managers came Trevor Francis, whose team had just confirmed their participation in the First Division play-offs thanks to a 1-0 win, and Lennie Lawrence, whose Grimsby Town side remained in danger at the other end of the table.Francis is a naturally lugubrious character, and had you not known of his team's circumstances, you might have thought he was the manager staring at an imminent drop. Lawrence, who has performed small miracles of survival in the past with teams such as Charlton Athletic, is a more naturally cheery character, but his face as he entered the room was set with worry, and his manner was distracted.
Such expressions are sometimes created by knowledge that the team bus is to leave imminently.
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But, in this case, it became immediately clear that Lawrence was tormented by the blend of creeping despair and fitful despair that is common to so many in his position at this time of year."What a strange season it is," he mused, without prompting "We seem to have been waiting for ever. Today, Palace losing was more important to us than if we'd hung on for a draw and they'd won. Then we'd have come away thinking, 'that's a great point for us'. And we'd have been sweating."For the last few weeks I've been convinced it's all a matter of fate We're reliant on so many others. I've been involved in loads of these kind of battles in my career, but I've never been in a situation like this.It's just endless."He leaned against the back of a chair, staring up in the direction of the dubious ceiling tiles, and then the top of his head flipped open like something in a Monty Python cartoon sequence and we saw the whirring calculating machine that had taken over his brain."I reckon we're in the clear four ways," he said, before reeling of a sequence of circumstances which had clearly been dwelt on. "One, we get a result against Fulham in our last game; two, Crystal Palace don't win both their remaining games; three, Huddersfield draw and lose their last two games; four, Portsmouth get less than three points from their last two games."At times, Lawrence revealed the attitude of mind which has served him, and those he has directed, so well in times of past adversity.When asked, for instance, to consider the prospect of his men beating the First Division champions today, he swiftly pointed out that Fulham no longer had the motivation of being able to break the division's points record.Here was a man who could put a positive spin on anything, it seemed. And to look on the bright side, of the four teams still at risk of joining Queen's Park Rangers and Tranmere in the drop, his is best placed.But if, tomorrow, Huddersfield win or even draw at home to Birmingham, and Palace win their final match at Stockport, and Portsmouth beat Barnsley at home... and Grimsby are beaten at home by the champions, Fulham...It's the nightmare scenario that will keep Lawrence twitching and calculating and hoping and despairing until all the final whistles are blown..