Preseason is heating up so we thought we'd get round the table and discuss it.

I'm Jamie joined by Stephen and Melly. Stephen, it's a, you said to me later on today in our group chat, you know, there is a tiered system to these preseason games and to preseason. Some of them are a bit worthless. Some of them are glorified trading sessions, let's be perfectly honest. But some of the games are actually a bit more meaningful as the squad try and ramp up

towards what reflects probably more what the actual season stuff is.

And I think we're getting into that with, depending on when you're listening to this,

sporting Lisbon tomorrow, and then the coveted Adidas Cup on the weekend against Newcastle. Those are two big teams that we're playing. Then it's off to Como at one point, yeah, as well to go and meet the rat that is Nicholas Coon, who's scurried off since the last time we all recorded together as well. But not yet. Are we saying that we're in, we're about to enter the business end of preseason.

Proper preseason now, isn't it?

That's right.

Yeah, of course.

I think you're right.

I think you're right to say that I'm right from earlier about there being a tiered system for preseason because I just, I don't really pay attention to the first couple.

I think it only takes looking at the fixtures to see that there is an escalation

in the difficulty level of the preseason.

And there is always a point where it crosses over into stopping the purely getting minutes in the legs exercise.

And you cross into, right, this is practicing for the season that's coming because

I know that people often say that all of preseason is just about fitness but that that's kind of

a logical because at some point you need to do the experimentation you need to work on things you

need to put your system together if for example you were to lose 2-0 to iax coming up, there's a big difference

between losing 2-0 because you took off all your important players and you ended up with a B-team playing

at the end and losing 2-0 because your system's completely incoherent and there's miles between

your centre-and-hast and there's a big gap in midfield and you just fell apart practically. So these

are the times to work on that.

So I'm looking forward to getting into the proper games because I think that's where we'll not

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