Finally…a pre-season to look forward too!
Taking a break from the nappy strewn front line of new fatherhood, Rogue Male takes a moment to wonder about the summer to come.
The last few weeks have passed as pretty much one long blur! Mostly this is because the machinations of Rogue Junior have taken precedence (for a while he held an un-beaten record as an R’s fan, the miraculous Preston come back was his debut and I really did think the gods favoured us). But to be honest, the club went on holiday early too!
Five minutes into the Norwich encounter the season came to an end. I generally have ambivalence to Norwich City, but I was mildly riled by the rather catty comments of Norwich fans over our display. Yes we lay down, but lets not forget how close they came to disaster and to be perfectly honest I can’t see much room for optimism for next years campaign in the flatlands!
The referee and to be honest, all right thinking deities conspired to ensure that West Brom were crowned champions at Loftus road. It’s bad enough that Stoke went up without them getting a trophy…in fact if they had to go up, then second was ideal, no championship, no big day out at Wembley.
What was missing this year was the huge sense of relief that the season was over. Usually, the avoidance of the play-offs, relegation or just the plain relief that the utter banality of mid-table aimless football was finished was enough to make the average R’s fan go rushing towards the summer with open arms.
This year I think we’d have quite happily carried on watching. With the advent of De Canio and the Italian way of life, Loftus road has seen, in patches, something that it was beginning to fear had gone forever…football! Outbreaks of intelligent, thoughtful and committed football!
Obviously this is no heralding of a glorious future, especially now Luigi has departed. This was still a team capable of total football and capitulating 4-2 at home, as the home game against Burnley proved. Despite the fact that were not going to run into too many Andy Cole’s, we’ll still manage to engineer enough defeats to happily keep our feet on the ground and in the championship for at least another season. But I did expect us to lose with style. I’ve no idea if that’s still the case.
Before that there is the pre-season to negotiate. Previously we’d have been looking forward to trips to Aylesbury, an ill-thought out tournament on a holiday Isle and a drubbing by Celtic. What’s going to happen this year? Real Madrid? Juventus? I’d have thought we’d at least be looking at some kind of all-star Grand Prix XI involving Michael Schumacher!
We’ve also got used to failing to shed deadweight, vague rumours of transfers and then an unseemly scramble for a couple of decent loans before August begins. Is all that a thing of the past? A few weeks ago the club, without too much fuss, announced that five young players were surplus to requirements. Of these only Sefan Bailey had made much of a mark. But from the moment Flavio appeared on the Uxbridge road you knew his days were numbered. This new efficiency is rather thrown by Nardiello returning, it’ll be interesting to see how the club sorts him out?
What will be interesting is who’ll be coming in to the club…and who’ll be buying them.
Obviously we are being linked with everyone at the moment, though rarely anyone you’d want. How many of us are excited by the new arrivals Radek Cerny and Peter Ramage?
Now I’m not one to start shouting for anything other than prudent progression, but surely we can be looking at some more inspiring signings. Can we prise proven performers at this level away from lucrative contracts. Bobby Zamora, Kevin Phillips, Danny Shittu or Steve Sidwell? If we really are going to push for promotion surely this is the calibre of recruit that ought to be being mentioned.
As the departure of Luigi De Canio was announced my first thought was …who is going to be buying the players? On balance I’m sorry to see De Canio go. Under him we’d begun to play some proper football, and despite his inability to make any progress with his English I thought he was starting to build something of substance.
I’m sure the Billionaires know what they are doing!
They do, don’t they?
Wait a minute…Season tickets!