First of the big three come to town
It’s a Friday night, it’s early July and we’re back.
Yes, I know it barely seems like we’ve been away but remarkably with England still competing at the Euros (not a sentence that you’d have likely seen at this stage of a summer tournament pre the Southgate era), our pre-season kicks off at 7.30 this evening with a visit from our near neighbours; league two Port Vale.
This is the first of ‘the big three’ pre-season games with Crewe coming here next weekend and Stoke City bringing their under 21s the weekend after. As the gaffer has commented extensively in the build-up to these early season testers, these games are great opportunities for our lads to test themselves against a level of opponent that we won’t face once the season gets fully underway.
With this game coming so early in pre-season, it’s almost impossible to say what team we will field. Neil Baker has been busy committing players for the new season, but the reality is that registering players has only been able to happen in the last seven days. It’s fair to say that there are a lot of unknowns.
To compensate, the gaffer has run full training sessions Saturday, Monday and Wednesday to help bring the players he has available up to speed in the knowledge that match fitness and sharpness will come.
For now, we’ve got a terrific match to look forward to and thanks to phenomenal levels of hindsight from the club’s hierarchy, we’ve managed to get the game on tonight without disrupting people’s plans to see England play Switzerland tomorrow, meaning you can all enjoy club and country over the weekend!
Come on Castle!