So far

[pc1401]

regardless of spend i think that a lot of next season will hinge on how shrewdly hughesy shuffles his pack of players. as we saw during our season-end run in, he can make some canny decisions and to be honest once this coming season starts i am not expecting the flaccid, white-flag-waving kind of performances that we saw all too often in the first two thirds of last season.

you can argue that we need a couple of more key positions credibly filled (and i'd agree) however even at this point in time, and with a stable pre-season, we will give a number of sides a good run for their money this time around, and i would include the newly promoted sides, swans, norwich (where we surely have to stop this bogey team rot with them now) and those mid-table mediocre types like foolham, villa, sunderland, west brom etc. into that. i also think our confidence will be buoyed by what happened towards the end of last season and that will also contribute positively.

This

[Tarbie]

I think with a decent pre-season we are looking in pretty good shape. The one area that does concern me a little is central defence, with Clint Hill and Ryan Nelson at 33 and 34 years of age I would say we would do well to get 20 games each out of them and Anton Ferdinand inconsistant I think we do need 1 more Premiership Centre Half.