Roll on Saturday

This time of year, a day or two before the opening game of the new football season, is always an exciting time but this year the apprehension and expectation is even greater.

It's been 18 months since we were able to gather in numbers and support our team. During that period, Thomas Sandgaard has ended the miserable Duchatelet years and secured the immediate future of the club, if not for longer than that. The most serious threat from Covid looks to be fading and we can now look forward to simply watching football and drinking our beer. It's been a long time coming.

Sky's decision to feature our game live at 5.30pm has meant we will get a prolonged pre-match reunion which should magnify what will already be an emotional and raucous occasion.

I think our team will be more than a match for Sheffield Wednesday and hopefully we can score first and ignite the stadium. If we do that, I think we can open with a morale-boosting victory. The 

Despite some misgivings about Gunter at left-back, I think our defence should be relatively solid and I am hoping our midfield can see more of the ball than them and that Wednesday are forced to defend for long spells. Too often in the last few years we have spent the majority of games passing the ball around the back and failing to find the midfield. Inniss and Famewo should give us a central pairing to anchor the defence and I am hopeful George Noble can direct traffic ahead of him. Unless we are surprised with a late signing this week, it looks like we will be relying on Clare, Jayesimi, Washington and Stockley to score the goals. 

Having finally paid the price for financial irregularities, Sheffield Wednesday have dropped into League One and are still under a transfer embargo. That has limited their close season activities to free transfers and loans but they have, at least, managed to do more business than us. However, they haven't pulled up any trees that I can see and we should still have a bit too much for them. They look even lighter upfront than us...I am going for 2-0.