Hard to beat

Fair dos. I'm definitely not rose-tinted on things. Last season was diabolical, and we've ended up with half a squad that wanted out, some of who are still with us. As a Club we found ourselves needing open-heart surgery, and there's a huge list of things that are broken. Our finances are in serious trouble and we're having to pretty much start again in rebuilding a team. Personally think we're still a full back, cm and two strikers light, but we have what we have. Given all that, I'm really not surprised we might still look a bit disjointed. It's been barely 8 weeks since Conway was ousted. Things aren't going to get magically better overnight.

But. In Duff I think we've got an absolute belter. He knows the game inside out, at all levels. From a recruitment point of view we've gone back to the plan, after Conway's disastrous attempt at being a CEO and owner (or whatever the fk he thought he was). We've brought In a group of players that on paper, have solid league football stock. We saw with Val, just what can be achieved with clear direction and leadership. I get that pre-season is the first chance we have to have a look at players, but I genuinely don't think we should read too much into em. I've seem us destroy teams during pre-season, then be awful as soon as competitive football starts.

Also genuinely believe there's a huge gap in quality between Champ and L1. Pretty confident there will be plenty of teams next season that are even more 'bang average' than us. My hope is that we bring in 3 or 4 more layers sharpish, and we see the squad improve week on week as Duff gets his plan across.

We'll soon find out.