What, already ?

Yet again, the football league season lurches over the horizon just when we'd got used to seeing the back of it. It does seem ridiculously early but what can you do. I haven't bought a season ticket this year ; I have just been texted by QPR to let me know that season tickets are still available. Yes, I bet they are. Nonetheless, I do believe that Rangers could have a very good season. Obviously this optimism comes to all of us (well most of us) every August, but one thing I'm sure of is that the vast majority of the "Championship previews" I've read were clearly composed in about half an hour before lunch.

When the hack in question reaches QPR in the list he comes up with meddling owners ... continual manager changes ... sold top scorer ... doom ! Who's next, Reading. While there's no denying those three facts, I'm still holding out some hope that the people running the club aren't complete fucking idiots. There's that optimism again. Surely at some point the penny will drop that they have to give someone a chance to do the job. Jim Magilton wasn't everyone's dream choice but as a slightly better informed local paper said in their preview, given that most of us expected that only a complete no-hoper would actually take the job it could have been a lot worse.

As for the squad, at face value it looks like we've lost Camp and Blackstock and only brought in an "unknown" midfielder and striker. Ooh, unknown to the guy who spends 10 minutes every week writing the first thing that comes into his head about the Championship in the Daily Mail ! Wow, they must suck ! The reality is that since Vine and Agyemang arrived 18 months ago, they have been head and shoulders above all the others as our best strike pair. Last season with injuries they played one game together, the last one. We also missed Rowlands and Buzsaky for a large chunk of the season. Now those four are added in, Angelo Balanta has played every game in pre-season and don't forget Wayne Routledge. The Loftus Road pitch, probably the worst in the division, has been relaid, and there's no change to the defence which was the 5th best anyway last season.

Follow the money. Betfair has us around 7th, but that's below Newcastle and Middlesboro who are always going to attract money but I don't fancy either. At all. Pre-season shme-season you might say, but it's damn hard to sweep a result like Leyton Orient 6 Newcastle 1 under the carpet even if it's a frigging testimonial. I make West Brom clear favourites, Sheffield United probably second, then there's a bunch of teams with not much between them and I reckon Rangers could be right in there. Of course, they could also sack Magilton in October for losing two games in a row and go right back to square one, I'm not saying that's impossible :-).

All of which kind of overstates how much I'm investing emotionally this year - which is as little as possible. I'll go when I feel like it. I'm the first to admit that I'm far more likely to go if they're winning games and there's a bit of feel-good around the place. I'm not even going to justify that. Whatever. As usual, it's just the shoddy journalism that annoys me. I'm pretty sure that for any club outside the big four, definitely any outside the Premiership, any fan with half a brain knows more about his club than the people who write blanket coverage in the national press. So my advice would be stick to the blogs if you want to know what's actually happening, and I'll chip in as and when I go to games.

Edit : Also lol at Darren Bent bitching on Twitter and then being "disappointed at how it came out". Does he fully understand how Twitter works do you think ?