Will our opening fixture team be better...

[rolymiller]

...than the Stubbs one that opened in the champ last time. Which was:

Camp, kelly, bfoot, wood, mattock frecks, vaulks, forster-caskey, forde, ward,taylor.
Subs: price, halford, wilson, allen, thorpe, smallwood, yates.

The first thing that hits me here is the weakness of the bench. There is no one there to change games like the bench we are likely to have next season.

We will still have players who played in that first game like vaulks, mattock, wood,forde and Taylor but hopefully they will now be a bit wiser but will definitely be fitter.

Defensively the Stubbs team is obviously older and slower than this season's but then again arguably they have more experience.

Midfield wise we still have not replaced frecks goals from midfield but we should have generally a more energetic one.

Up front we will probably be similar but ward was no more prolific than Smith or proctor and I would argue both have a better work rate than ward.

Will our starting line up be better this season? Could depend on signings and while i am resigned to not getting emmanuel back i would think we have a decent chance of getting towel and rodak which would mak e a big difference. We will certainly have a hungrier, more youthful fitter team with a decent bench. Add to that a great team spirit so we ought to give it a better go.

[rolymiller]

Just another thought to add to the above we will hopefully be playing with more positivity than the stubbsy era.

[mikemiller]

Just another thought to add to the above we will hopefully be playing with more positivity than the stubbsy era.

The Stuubsy era - other than the first 20 minutes of the opening game, it was pretty awful to watch. Just checked Kelvin Wilson's record - after his 8 games for us, it looks like he retired from professional football.

(Tom Thorpe now playing in the Indian Super League- his manager is Teddy Sheringham)

[rolymiller]

He might as wellhave.

[mikemiller]

... before he signed for us. Actually he did have one decent game for us at the NYS (can't remember who against, but we didn't lose, possibly Brentford?)

[mikemiller]

Just checked - probably was that Millers 1 Brentford 0 game They had 18 shots, we had 6, but we held out for a win - unusual for us that season