"We're not thinking about Europe," Glasgow Union's manager said again this week, for what a local journalist counted as the fourth time in six weeks. It's become something of a running joke among the press pack that covers his post-match conferences — the more results improve, the more insistently he denies thinking about the one thing every result is visibly building towards.
Union sit fifth, three points off the European qualification places with games in hand, a genuinely remarkable position for a club that started the season being tipped by most pundits for a relegation battle instead. The squad, largely unchanged from last season's mid-table finish, has simply started performing above what anyone reasonably expected — four clean sheets in six matches, and a run of form that has quietly crept the club into contention without anyone in the dressing room, apparently, noticing.
Players tell a slightly different story to their manager's programmed caution. "Of course we know where we are in the table," one senior midfielder admitted with a smile after the club's most recent win. "The gaffer tells us not to look at it. We look at it."
Whether the studied denial is genuine man-management or simple superstition, it's working well enough on the pitch that nobody at the club seems inclined to change the script — even as the phrase "we're not thinking about Europe" becomes more obviously untrue with every passing week.