It has felt slightly ridiculous these last couple of weeks as the tone of this blog has veered from optimism to despair and lurched back through the gears again. But that’s football. You can write whatever you want about it, but sometimes the most finely wrought prose or acute, piercing insight just will not capture it.

Right now it feels almost futile sitting down and typing up this match, because only a week ago I was saying the exact opposite and next week I'll probably be saying something different again. That's the essence of football and that's why we love it, why we hold our heads in our hands and wonder why we turn up, and then why we punch the air and wonder what we'd ever do without it.

Okay, so maybe I’m waxing a bit lyrical. Saturday's win didn’t arise randomly out of the unpredictable thrill ride of football. The result against Liverpool was the culmination of a series of factors I've documented in the last few entries (and a few I haven't), and with a bit of thought it wasn't the bolt from the blue it may initially have seemed. The new defensive unit that has stopped shipping those pressure-inducing goals, Stewart Downing's sudden return to form after notching his first goal, Southgate's realisation (finally) that Alves is not going to make it in this league this season at best, and never at worst, and that surge of confidence we felt after beating West Ham on Wednesday, a result that gave belief back to decent players who lacked it before… all of these things played their part in a great performance.

Then there's the other side of the coin. After every big result the victorious manager will tell you his team played their best football, and the defeated manager will say it was their worst performance of the season. Somewhere else on Soccernet, my Liverpool counterpart has doubtless penned a despairing summary of his team's failures this season that reached a critical point against us at the Riverside. Liverpool have been going off the rails for weeks now- in fact, they've barely stayed on them all season. They've a major shortage of strikers and with Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres unfit they’re an even less dynamic side than usual. Rafa Benitez did his thing and rotated after a big European match. And so on.

Of course, Gareth Southgate won't say a word of that to his players, and most Liverpool fans will be too aghast to be interested in Boro's part in the result. The truth usually lies in the middle with these things- it was a good Middlesbrough performance and a poor Liverpool one, but when you're propping up the league without a win in fifteen matches the only way you’ll beat a Champion's League side is by catching them during a bad spell.

Honestly, it doesn't matter who takes blame or credit. What matters are those three points that have taken us, temporarily at least, out of the relegation zone. And that is massive. Absolutely massive. We're still a long way from safe, and we'll need to play out of our skins over the next dozen games to get out of this mess, but my God does it feel good to get that win. Everyone associated with the club will be feeling the same way. If this is the result that turns our season around, how it arrived, who did well and who messed up will not matter.

What does matter now is that we build on this; that next week this blog doesn't swerve sharply through the emotional spectrum once again. The side looks to be pulling out of its dismal run of form and things are beginning to come together. We can't now go to Spurs in mid-week and capitulate because we've just had a win and we're playing away from home. If Gareth Southgate has any nous as a manager he'll be engineering a result there even now. For the past few seasons at least one team has pulled off a miraculous escape from near-certain relegation, and whether it was West Brom, Portsmouth, West Ham or Fulham they did it by building on their victories and put together an improbable run of form. We cannot put our feet up and lapse back into inconsistency. As massive as this result is, the Spurs one on Wednesday will be even bigger. They played through extra time to penalties against Man United in the League Cup final and will be sapped from the experience. If Boro can play with a high tempo against Spurs they might not have the legs to deal with us.

Hopefully. That's the kind of optimism born out of successive wins. Let's hope it hasn't dried up again on Thursday morning. See you then.