Reporting back for pre-season

You'll be pleased to know that PATGOD has reported back for a thorough pre-season work out ahead of 2026-27 term.  We've summered well.  A few mental pounds might need to be shed before our sarcasm and cynicism are match fit, but we're confident we'll find our footing again. We've also reached certain age milestones that we needn't go into too much, except to say, had W**** T******** kept his mouth shut would have resulted in discounted admission prices at the Latimer Park turnstiles.

The World Cup is now safely in our rearview mirror and the club's new, impressive Fan Zone will be given over to us miserable sods again.  A World Cup where Thomas Tuchel's team took a similarly unsuccessful leaf from the Poppies end of season safety-first playbook.  Get an early goal?  That'll do.  Warm up the defenders on the bench and tell the reserve forwards to hit the showers.  Hopefully, with our pre-season striking acquisitions our ambitions may stretch beyond hitting the ball in Panter's general direction, then sit back and hope he beats 3-men and scores.

It's been a strange Poppies summer.  The club has been actively coveted by a former player with money to burn, while at the same time our current owner has presided over one of our better pre-season recruitment drives.  Got to say, I know nothing about most of the players we've signed, but the fact we're going into our friendlies fielding our own players rather than the usual conveyor belt of trialist "talent" can only be a good thing.

This season Liam has a team HE has put together to attempt his tilt at the title.  Assuming of course he is around to shepherd his new charges and not sitting out a ban for historic online activities (that sounds far more suspect than I intended).

For George's sake, we need to hit the ground running.  A stumbling start on or off the pitch may see the pressure for regime change rekindled after such talk had abated during the World Cup.  He first needs to get the clubs comms running properly.  Sorting our hideously out of date website should be an easy start.  How hard is it to update the playing staff to include our new signings?  I was temporarily excited to see that George Forsyth had come back....

Also, perhaps ensure the Twitter and other accounts aren't accessible by people fired up by too much time / alcohol / grievance.  Some of our posts last season were bizarre at best and inexcusable at worst.  Either re-jig the accounts so previous password holders can't access them, or remember to log out of the club accounts when indulging in personal score settling.  Either way - sort it!

Oh, and if we can keep the cheap, tacky and largely inaccurate AI-generated slop to a bare minimum - that would be much appreciated!

With pre-season in full swing, the NN15 / NN16
hosepipe ban couldn't have come at a worse time.