We're all just dying to know what the future holds for us.
No, I don't mean how long we're going to live or how many kids we're going to have that will be ignoring us in our old age anyway - no, nothing as mundane as that. We just want to know what sort of a year its going to be. And I'm not referring to how much money our tight employers are going to give us in our pay rise or how our spuds are going to be this year.
What I'm dying to know is - what kind of a season are we going to have? Are we going to be safe? Satisfied? Depressed? Frustrated? Relieved? Miserable? Who the hell knows?
And as always any optimistic feelings that I may have gleamed from the Utrecht fight-back didn't last long and over the last couple of days have dissipated almost completely. I recalled someone saying our performance was inept against New Zealand and then I realised we're still giving bad goals away and besides how good can Utrecht be anyway.
So to try to allay my sense of growing doom I turned the Sunday papers to the results section and there under the previous day's league results I found what I was looking for; the "other results" section. With all the other teams having already started, all the results were , of course, our Premiership rivals. With fearful thumb but with a thought process carefully analysing the meaning of the result and keen, or is it desperate, to find a weakness, I scanned the lines:
Bolton 1 AZ Alkmaar 3
- thats not so bad although Alkmaar are good and finished 2nd last year in Holland and made the UEFA Semis
Everton 0 Athletic Bilbao 1
- thats better, Bilbao finished 13th and are usually crap away
Fulham 1 Boavista 1
- Boavista were 6th last year but with lots of changes during the summer - looks a reasonable result for Fulham
Man. City 0 Porto 1
- to be expected, Porto were double winners in Portugal last year
Man. U 3 Seville 0
- Who cares
Middlesbro' 0 Chievo 0
- getting better - Middlesbro still can't score; 4 goalless pre-season games
West Ham 1 Olympiakos 1
- Greek Champions, looks a good result from the Hammers
FC Groningen 2 Aston Villa 2
- Despite dire rumours from Villa Park, a result very similar to the Addicks, Groningen finished 5th last year, one above Utrecht
And then the one that I knew would be there somewhere - the one that confirms all my fears and tells us how good we really are and will doubtless add to my sleepness nights;
Blackburn 5 (FIVE) New Zealand 0
PS - Look on the bright side Mrs Nelson says - at least we're not playing them till December, they'll have peaked by then and besides Blackburn have even trashed Olympiakos 5-0 in a tournament in Germany so we're no worst than West Ham.
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