Five Steves go to war! - A terrible season preview

Cos, AI exists - It's chaos and time as expressed in oil painting with the theme of Blackpool FC. Obviously.

Are we ready? Shall we look at it objectively?

Fuck that.

All football fans are delusional. You can be all mega realistic and pride yourself on objectivity and detachment but ultimately, if you're spending your days hanging out on social media dedicated to a lower league football team and your Saturdays/midweeks watching said team play football then that's a bit mental. If anyone was truly 'objective' then they'd sack it off and do something where the reward you got equalled the effort you put in. I dunno, needlework or community gardening or cultivating an interesting drug addiction involving strictly controlled doses of hallucinogens, that type of thing.

We're winning this

We're going to win the League, the FA Cup, the League Cup and the Tinpot Cup. Stone Cold FACTS. You can't argue with me because I said 'fact' and I put it in bold, coloured it tangerine and for good measure used CAPITALS. In a post truth world, some CAPITALS or bold is all that's needed to make something concrete. Conviction is reality. We'll win all of them, winning every game 10-0 and Ash Fletcher will break Dixie Dean's record for goals. In the FA Cup final Rodri will break down in tears mid-game and demand to be substituted because he can't keep pace with Albie Morgan and Pep will have one of those creepy post game conversations where he puts his arm round Jimmy Husband and talks to him really intensely like he's the self appointed living saint of football or something and not just a bloke who has always had the best players. 

To be fair, whilst that's definitely going to happen, I've felt that's definitely going to happen more or less every year since about 1991 and most years it doesn't happen. Sometimes the opposite happens but this year it's our year. I can sense it. The previous 34 years are but minor details. 

I seem to be a little hyped up. Perhaps the dosage wasn't quite as strictly controlled as I'd hoped. 

Let's come down from the high and weigh things up a bit in a measured and 'pundity' way. I'm putting on a jacket and shirt with no tie and sitting down behind a desk now. What do I make of the squad? 

"Frankly Clive, it's like a fruit cake with no cherries. It's a house with no wallpaper, It's a song with no lead guitar*" 

*To be quite honest, I'm not a big fan of fret wanking but for the sake of the metaphor, lets run with it

We're winning this too

We look... 'solid' - Solid though is only one 't' away from 'stolid' and and that's where my fears lie this year. We have plenty of 'solid pros' with 'experience' who've got 'good careers' behind them. The business in that respect has been good, excellent even. We've got, to torture the above metaphors* further, the dough, the foundations, the bass and drums of the team and they're really good. What we need is the flavour, the spice, the decoration, the flair, the expression, the elan. The sum of the parts is about the blend. Football is alchemy in that respect. 11 Thierry Henry's wouldn't win games. You need some Steve Boulds. 11 Steve Boulds would be bobbins, you need some Thierry Henry's. 

*actually, I think they're similes but I'm uncertain as to whether a simile is a subset of the umbrella term metaphor in the way right back is a subset of the umbrella term defender. 

We're currently wingless wonders. The worry is, I'm going to have to stop myself mentioning R__ A____ and S____ C____ on a weekly basis because those two provided quite a lot. There was a view amongst some that they would be 'easy to replace' but so far, the task seems more difficult than anticipated as we go into the season with the lesser spotted Tom Bloxham and the currently injured CJ as the other non-option on the wing unless we want to chuck a kid in - something I'm never against, but unlike the last couple of years, when R__ A____ was knocking at the door and the supporters (that's us!) were clamouring for his inclusion, there isn't a screamingly obvious prospect at the gates of the first team. 

This is the first season in ages where we've not got an obviously hyper talented but sometimes feckless player at our disposal. It feels as if we've got lots of 'competitors' but lack the matchwinner. If we go from say, Nya Kirby (how is he not a league footballer any more?) through Sullay Kaikai (praise be) to Josh Bowler (he's more solar power on a cloudy day than mains electricity these days sadly) through Ian ('call me 'Yon') Poveda with his Rolls Royce to Morgan Rogers (fuck me, we had Morgan fucking Rogers and we didn't play him every week!!!) to Karamoko Dembele (he wasn't even feckless ever, what a player) to R__ A____ (I'm not doing a brackets comment for him cos he was only here 3 weeks ago) and add a sprinkling of Keshi, S____, Fonz, the Feendog and probably someone else someone will point out that I've forgotten - then it's clear the makeup of the squad is different than it has been because there's no one who remotely resembles any of them. 

This will be ours as well.

Steve '90s football funhouse' Bruce has been adamant we're going to get the ball wide. He played with two wingers pretty much all last year, even when we didn't obviously have a left winger. He reinvigorated S____ C____ (I'm getting a bit fed up of counting the _ as I write the names of R__ A____ and S____ C____ if I'm honest) by making him into a kind of inside forward/left winger just so we could have two (sort of) wingers but I don't really see anyone with the same attributes to do that again. 

We've got plenty of full backs/wing backs but let's be clear. Full backs on the wing is a shit idea. We had Critchball 2.0 to chisel that into our consciousness and it's a hideous feat of collective forgetting, akin to some kind of Stalin-esque rewriting of history to pretend that 'maybe Coulson and Lyons could be good on the wing?' because no, they won't. They'll try very hard, they'll be 'ok' but nobody in the squad (bar Bloxham perhaps) has that mesmerising ability to pick the ball up and destroy a full back, to cut inside or glide outside, to burrow towards the box or the byline - yes, we have players who might have done that once or twice and might do it once or twice again, but they won't do it every time they get the ball, they won't pose question after question to the defenders they face. They're good players and our first 14 or 15 looks pretty good - but they're not the kind of relentlessly attacking, sometimes not tracking back, at time infuriating but also at times sensational player we lack. We might be able to get away with a generalised 'wide player' on one flank - but not both - it just won't ask the questions, pull defences out of shape. We'll be blunt with a capital B.L.U.N.T. 

Let's weigh it all up. Keepers. Fine, all good. Right backs and left backs - we have some. Centre backs - seems pretty strong. Midfielders, brilliant - we've got more than two! Honeyman seems a really strong signing who may be the player to inject some of the imagination I fear we lack and Brown is exactly what we need in terms of winning the ball back. Strikers, Ennis and Fletcher were a decent pair, Kylian is the best Kylian in world football and could maybe be an interesting option as an agent of chaos late in the game - but we definitely need one more because if Super Ashley or Ennis (again) gets injured, I wouldn't want to rely on Kylian or the non heading Tom Bloxham for weeks and months on end. 

We'll win this too, just to stick two fingers back at the lower leagues as we head off to inevitably winning the World Club Cup in a few years. 

That brings us back to wingers. We need some. We've not even got a Jamie Burns or a Charlie Kirk in reserve. We've only got a one legged CJ and god bless CJ and his confused magic and the enigmatic Bloxham who is increasingly feeling like a brilliant but ever distant memory - if we only had a two legged CJ and the memory of Tom Bloxham at Exeter I'd be writing basically the same article. 

It's Wednesday morning. The game is Saturday. Are we ready? I think in many ways we are - but, like a curry without spice is just a load of cooked vegetables, a lot of solid and dependable players without a few pinches of magic sprinkled on top isn't a recipe for global dominance. Preseason is meaningless, but it's the only evidence we have at this point and from what I've seen, Honeyman can pick a pass, we've got lots of effort and willingness to compete, there's seemingly a focus on moving the ball a bit quicker through midfield but there's not been a great deal of magic beyond some nice awareness and flicks/layoffs from Ash Fletcher. Magic is good. It's what keeps you turning up. 

Yes, it's only Wednesday and the game is Saturday, yes I know, Premier League loans don't happen till later in general (I would be really sad if the Apter money funds those alone to be honest, even if it's kind of the way things are in respect of where young players generally are found these days) but three points on Saturday, three points in August in general are worth exactly the same amount as three points anywhere else in the calendar and we've had two seasons back at this level, two slow starts and two seasons where we've just missed out. We've done a lot of the work early and that has to be acknowledged, we've signed some very good players - but it would be tremendous to see us putting some of the finishing touches to the the (squad) building ahead of the very final deadline because to finish a few points short after a slow start for the third year running would be careless and frustrating in the extreme. 

We've got the money because we never expected to sell R__ A____ and whilst it's prudent, sensible, wise and thoughtful to keep it in our pocket till the time is right. In terms of timing, it has to be said it's also right now that we need players to add what we lack as we're seriously considering going into the season not able to play the formation that we've clearly otherwise coached and recruited for over the last year. 

Lets bring it back now. Have another controlled dose. If it were obvious that we were a division smashing juggernaut with a perfectly balanced squad, it wouldn't be us. It would be Birmingham or Man City or whoever. I'm not going to say 'it would be boring' because I think it would be a lot of fun for the first few years at least - but more to the point, I'm just some bloke who knows next to nothing clattering out words on blog for my own ego and my judgement of football is worth very little. I've written a lot about what we've not got - but there's doubtless more quality and depth to most parts of the team. 

For the first time in months, there is a Saturday to look forward to. There's a host of new players, we've got a manager we trust and there's a first game in anger in the refreshed ground to experience. 

The five Steves vs Stevenage. I can't fucking wait.

10-0 Pool (at least) 

Onward

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