Tony Cascarino's football lesson No 10: Anatomy of last day miracles and mess-ups

You get some strange outcomes on the last day of the season. So many times, what seems a likely result doesn’t happen. Fulham will know this better than most because they beat Norwich City 6-0 on the last day a couple of years ago when they were mid-table and Norwich needed to win to have a chance of staying up. Fulham are now expected to beat Portsmouth on Sunday, when if this fixture had been earlier in the season, few would have given them a prayer.

These days, there are so many factors in the mix, so many emotions and different personal situations, that the conditions for a surprise are easily created. Even “safe” teams are volatile beneath the surface. There is never nothing to play for.

Over the past ten or fifteen years, the make-up of teams has changed. As football’s become a squad game, managers whose sides are safe are increasingly using the last fixtures to give fringe players some action or test out promising young players. That has been common in European countries for a while.

It means that even if a team is mid-table and puts out a so-called weak team, they may still impress because it’ll be full of players with a point to prove, players desperate to show their talents, ending the year on a high and forcing their way into the manager’s thinking for next season.

Some players will know it’s their last game for the club and will aim to leave with their head held high; or perhaps not be too fussed if they’ve already signed a deal elsewhere. Some will want to get a win for the fans, to leave them with happy memories over the summer.

I had to play the 1994 FA Cup Final for Chelsea knowing I was being kicked out of the club after it was over. I went to the 1994 World Cup finals worried I was on the scrap-heap because I didn’t have anywhere to go. At Aston Villa, I ended the season not sure if I’d be there in August.

It’s a scary time in the lower leagues, when you might be playing for your livelihood. If you get released, perhaps no one will want you. So you put everything into the last 90 minutes, hoping you’ll do enough to convince the manager to keep you.

The mentality is totally different from the first match of the season. Everyone’s optimistic, if you’re in the team you believe you’ll be there all year, it seems like a level playing field.

Fatigue isn’t a factor when the stakes are so high. When a team is chasing promotion or trying to avoid relegation, players don’t get paralysed by fear, even though they know one mistake could cost everything. The fear of being unemployed overrides everything, so they drive themselves on. You’re not thinking about missing a penalty, your worries are bigger than individual incidents.

Managers can’t change much at this stage. All they can do is try and coax a little more from the players, any way they can – such as telling them their future is secure, just as long as the club stays up. It might be a promise they won’t later keep, but in desperate times…