We are on the brink of a new season and, as usual, it’s impossible to forecast whether it is going to be good, bad or mediocre. Pre-season games are not good predictors of results in games that matter. And I wouldn’t want some features of the home game against Roda JC, such as the lack of goals, to be repeated too often.

I also don’t want to see a large police presence at games. There were 426 Roda fans at the game and, from where I sat, they appeared to be well behaved.  So I was surprised to see the large number of police escorting them away from the ground after the game. When I asked about this I was told that our police had received intelligence from the Dutch Police that disorder was highly likely with some of the travelling fans. Since Roda had never played in England before, our police had no other way to gauge what to expect and they had increased police resources.

It is regrettable but probably inevitable that we are going to see similar styles of policing for our games against Villa this season. Unfortunately, it is sometimes necessary. Let’s hope it won’t be needed for our season opener against Cardiff tomorrow, and that we get some goals and 3 points.