​We need to lift the ‘ho-hum’ feeling around Deepdale, says Preston fan John Smith

This describes the mood of weariness I have felt at Deepdale in watching our losing sequence of four successive home league defeats as we prepared to ost Bristol City. It has started to affect my mental well being.

I have become convinced that the famous old Deepdale gypsy curse has returned with a vengeance and that manager Ryan Lowe, similar to our former manager Billy Davies, needs to buy a brass Buddha and rub its belly for luck in order to break it.

However after hearing his pre-match talk about taking the shackles off the players and adopting a more gung-ho approach to home games I entered the stadium feeling slightly more positive than in recent weeks.

The last time I have really enjoyed watching a home game was way back last May when we beat Middlesbrough 4-1 in the final game of last season.

When I heard the news that we were starting this game with three forwards, it gave me a lift and I was hoping we could produce something along those lines to ease some of the doom and gloom and negativity in and around Deepdale at the moment.

In reality though this game followed the now almost customary ho-hum script and ended with a fifth successive home league defeat. We started on the front foot with the lively Tom Cannon almost giving us an early lead which would have been a huge boost.

However, shortly after this it was time for the curse to strike when Robbie Brady inexplicably gifted the visitors the all-important first goal when his weak back pass was easily intercepted by the Bristol forward who rounded Woodman and slotted the ball into the empty net.

We did press for an equaliser during the remainder of the half despite the visitors trying to stifle our attacking play with some Olympic standard time wasting antics but were then stunned when Bristol broke and doubled their advantage with the last kick of it.

Having scored just eight home league goals all season and now needing three to win it meant that in the second half we would have to go on a journey of Starship Enterprise proportions and go boldly where we had never been before if we were going to get something out of this game.

My man of the match Ched Evans worked hard and was passionate and aggressive just like a Captain James T Kirk managing to pull a goal back for us on the hour mark.

Unfortunately, although we huffed and puffed, in the end we did not manage to reach our final frontier of a strange new world.

Whether or not "we had a real good go "depending on how you viewed the game I left the ground feeling that once again some supernatural forces had been at work and wandering when the current wave of the curse was ever going to stop.