Pre-season games - my least favourite part of the football calendar.

Pre-season is only about arriving at Game 1 of the season in optimum shape. It's important because we never want to be like the Nolan team again - not ready to do yourself justice.
But the pre-season games themselves and the results don't matter at all and you should never draw conclusions from meaningless games with players just off the beach and the managers trying out all sorts of different stuff.