Thursday 10 September 2009

The Season Starts Here!

It'll be good to get back to action on Saturday, and it'll be interesting to see just what sort of game we get. It might be our first real chance to actually guage just how good Dean Saunders' new-look side actually is.

Fabio Capello said, when he took charge of Real Madrid for his last spell, that after fifty days you would be able to see what sort of team he had assembled. Unfortunately for him, on the fiftieth day of his reign they were thrashed by Getafe! (Nonetheless he did go on to win the league!) The point was you can't expect a side to gel straight away, or a coach to immediately work his magic. You might get that artificial boost a new manager brings, but it takes time to bed things in.

So it's premature to draw too many conclusions about our prospects for the season based on what we've seen so far. It would also be misleading, as we've yet to face the sort of challenge we'll come up against on Saturday. Thus far we've tended to face sides who come to the Racecourse looking for a clean sheet, but surely Oxford will come out to play. They're the first genuine promotion contenders we've come across, with the possible exception of Crawley, who are a scrappy bunch anyway.

This isn't necessarily a bad thng. Sure, they'll clearly be better player-for-player than anyone we've come up across thus far-in fact I fancy them to pip Luton to the title, to be honest. However, they'll also let us play, and that might answer a key question. Are we good enough to be up there, looking to pip them?

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