Dreadful preview: the Mighty vs Nottingham Forest

This week, one of the podcasts in my podcast feed offered a preview of the World Cup draw. This seemed to be stretching the definition of 'content' a little.

Alan, I'm going to roll this dice. Could you give us your thoughts on the numbers 1 to 6 before I do so?

I'll be totally honest, I don't really see the need for previews. I'm old enough to remember the days before Radio 5, Talksport, Sky and that type of thing. As a younger kid, a preview was 'now to Highbury, where Bryan Butler has the team news' and then we cracked on with it.

I liked that. You thought about something else till about 2.10 pm and then football started and by about 6pm, you knew all the scores, who the scorers were and if anyone had been sent off. Sorted.

I've never really paid much attention to journos guessing what might happen and doing interviews with players who are contractually obliged to say fuck all because,at the end of the day Clive, a preview can only really tell you so much. 

We can learn:

- one of the teams will be higher in the league (Forest in this case) 

- the teams will have played some games recently (unless it's the beginning of the season when they won't have) 

- the teams have some players (this is the case today) and some of them might be injured (again, true of this match) 

- there might be some sort of grudge or needle (there's a bit of play off history I suppose and if I remember correctly, they had a couple of take the piss bids for Josh Bowler but it's not exactly Tuesday night)

I don't really understand why we can't just wait and see what the team actually is. I always like it when you get to the ground and there's a surprise player but that doesn't really happen any more because of endless previews and press conferences. 

In the old days before transfer windows, it was a rare but excellent treat if you discovered you'd signed someone without you actually knowing and the first you heard of it was their name being read out on the PA system 

"Who is Steve Spooner?"

"Got him from Mansfield" 

"When?" 

"Tuesday I think" 

One of the pictures above is the real Steve Spooner. The other is an actor called Steve Spooner. Can you tell which is which? For a chance of winning £1 send £2 to MCLF P0 BOX GM 14 (terms and conditions apply) along with your answer.

It's obligatory in a preview to say something about the opposition. Here, I have to be honest, I know fuck all about Forest apart from that I went to the away game and they looked really organized. They kind of looked like us but with slightly superior attributes, so ultimately won because of that. We're a bit better than then so, I dunno. It'll be a game of football. 

I do know I really like their third kit and in the unlikely event that I wake up and writing this is a dream and I realise I'm not really a shite blogger in the north west of England but actually am from Montreal or Peshawar or summat and thus buying the third kit of a second tier English club is a first class hipster move then I'd be all over it. Obviously, after I'd bought our black one first. Even I discover I'm not me and this is an illusion, I don't think I'd be able to not follow the Mighty from this point onward. 

It's like the colours are caught in a gust of wind man...

Finally, it's obviously, the law to mention Clough. One of my favorite things in the world is his habit of adding "and that type of thing" as a suffix to statements as it's a idiosyncratic mannerism I've never heard anyone share. 

There'll be heading, kicking, tackling and that type of thing in the game today. It will be football. There's a lot of it this week.