Five conclusions: Huddersfield Town needlessly panic again at ten-man Bolton

A two-goal advantage and a Bolton red card weren’t enough to spare Town fans yet another feeble collapse​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

1. History repeats itself: first as tragedy, second as farce, third as really bloody annoying​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

3-1 up against ten men with 13 minutes plus stoppage time to play, and still they found a way to blow it.

The best way to enjoy Huddersfield Town at this point may well be to treat their games like watching an episode of Blackadder.

No matter how cunning their plan might be, you know there is simply no way for our hero to win. After all, the entire premise of their situation — in Town’s case, that they’re not quite good enough to deserve a play-off place — would then be ruined. But you also need our hero to come within touching distance of victory, only to have it snatched away in increasingly unlikely fashion and returned to their status quo, otherwise all the dramatic tension is ruined.

It’s taken some doing, but Town have managed to maintain the ideal conditions for farce. They’ve been destined for weeks to miss out on the play-offs, yet Stevenage have managed to take just four points from their past three games and give Town hope of making up the three-point gap that existed after Easter weekend.

And so, just to make sure they didn’t do that, Town had to find a way to earn just three points in the same time, despite leading in the 100th minute of the first game, the 94th minute of the second, and the 100th minute of the third.

Even so, any comic formula wears thin over time, and by now it’s become too predictable to be funny. Once Bolton got it back to 3-2, you could see the final punchline from a mile away.