In a season in which Sunderland continue to exceed all expectations and with a real air of excitement as they go into their final two games of the season with a genuine chance of reaching the play-offs, there has been one constant. The calm, experienced, unflappable, presence of Tony Mowbray has ensured that feet have been anchored firmly to the ground, no-one has been allowed to get carried away.
Start to talk up Sunderland's play-off chances and Mowbray will turn the conversation to his satisfaction that the team has stayed clear of the relegation scrap. Sometimes after a thumping victory he has seemed as happy with the clean sheet as with the goals.
A 40-odd year career in football has taught Mowbray about the pitfalls of riding the waves of emotion - he prefers to remain level-headed, calling it his 'self-defence mechanism''. Bad times will inevitably follow good, and vice-versa.
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And that is why Mowbray eschews the fist-pumping, chest-beating, badge-kissing, approach that some managers or head coaches adopt. "When you stand in that technical area, you can have good times and you can have bad times and I know that somewhere down the line at this football club, if there's a longevity to it, there are going to be bad times," he said.
"There's going to be booing, there's going to be dissent from behind you. I don't know who the best managers have been here, but generally things don't end well in football because it's a journey.
"I had five-and-a-half years at Blackburn that started with a relegation because I took the job when they were in real distress, second-bottom of the league, but then it was a journey back. That's what I feel with this club - we're on a journey, and it's going to be up and down, it's not going to be constant.
"There are going to be troughs as well as peaks. That's why I think a lot of people either don't want this job or don't cope very well with it.
"I try not to get carried away with the good times and think 'wow, isn't it great'. You don't see me on the pitch pumping my fist and beating my chest in front of the fans and getting them to cheer - I don't do it.
"That's not because I don't appreciate them, it's amazing this football club and the fans that come and watch us, but I don't want to celebrate one second with people and then the next find they are telling me I'm rubbish, I don't know what I'm doing, and to get out of their club. I'd rather keep an even keel all the way through.
"I know who I am, I work hard, I give everything I've got, and if I can't get results with the players I've got at any given time then I have no problem letting someone else have a go. It's never fazed me.
"I said to Blackburn fans that I didn't want to be a burden on their football club, and there was a deluge of people saying 'you're not a burden'. I try to be honest with people, I work hard every day, I leave my family, I come to work, I work until I feel there is nothing else for me to do, and then I go back home, have tea with them, watch telly if I'm home early enough, go to bed and then get up the next day ready to go again.
"It's a job you do because you love it, my wife knows that and my kids know that. It's what drives me and it's what keeps me going.
"When I stop doing it, I can only see myself getting old very quickly! I've had criticism in the past that I'm not emotional enough with the fans at the end of the game, why don't I celebrate with them.
"People are happy now and things are going well, but let's say we got into the Premier League and we hadn't won any of the first ten games, the whole place would be wanting me out! So it's probably a self-defence mechanism.
"I don't want to be two-faced guy who one second is the hero and the next second is the villain. I just want to let everybody know that I work hard and I'm doing my best for your team."
If Mowbray needed a reminder of how quickly the ground can shift under the feet of a head coach, he only need look back to the beginning of the week when, less than 24 hours after Mowbray's team had won at West Bromwich Albion to move into a play-off place, a left-field social media story appeared suggesting Italian coach Francesco Farioli might replace him this summer.
It was a story that defied logic, and one that Mowbray shrugged off with customary insouciance. Nevertheless, it only served to underline his point.
You just never know what is around the corner.
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