It is always interesting to trawl other clubs' forums to gauge the reaction to our (i.e. my) season preview. We badge the two articles as The Vital Lincoln City Season Preview, but it is no such thing of course. It is a season preview written by Scotimp, or Phil Priddle for those who know me by my real incarnation. The bottom line is: it is my season preview.
The supporters of every club start every season with a sense of optimism, regardless of where they finished last season or what the factual prognosis may be telling them about their immediate future. Every supporter rides roughshod over reality to arrive in a place where the new season generates nothing but optimism when 3pm on the opening day comes around. At Lincoln City, we are probably the same. That is entirely understandable, and completely natural.
Supporters convince themselves that 2017-18 was an anomaly, an abberation in their club's irresistible journey towards the higher echelons of the Football League (or the 'English Football League', for the benefit of those uninterested in protecting what is traditionally our preserve and chronological right). They have a good squad in reality, and their summer transfer business has been extraordinarily impressive. Their manager is light years ahead of every other manager. Every supporter of every club will be thinking that. Every supporter. Of every club.
But the reality is somewhat different. There will be winners and losers. Someone will be promoted, and someone will be relegated. To those supporters whose clubs I appear to have slighted, I apologise unreservedly. I have no more idea of that prognosis than anyone else.
Actually, that is not entirely true.
It takes around three months to compile the season preview for Vital Lincoln City. It involves visiting every League Two club website (and the vast majority of their fans' forums) at least twice every day to keep abreast of everything that happens at every club on and off the field.
I also compile the Who Are The League Two Managers? articles, which also take a fair amount of time. I do this in my spare time, of course. It is not my job by any stretch of the imagination, and I receive no reward for it. I do it because I find it interesting, and I hope others do likewise.
What all of that activity gives me is an overview of where every club is regarding its existing squad, its departures, its signings, its financial position, the owners, the managers, the coaches, the relationships between clubs/owners/supporters and how all of those factors compare with the rest of League Two. I try to inject a modicum of humour in places to alleviate the gravity of all those statistics, but the underlying trend is hopefully one of accuracy.
And that is where the difference lies.
Let me ask you a question: how many supporters actually bother to compare their summer business with that of every other club in their division? And how many take the time to place every League Two squad side by side and carry out an unbiased comparison of all twenty-four? I would wager it is a very small number.
I am not claiming to be infallible by any means, and I am often wrong. I had no idea Accrington would finish anywhere significant last season, let alone win the league. That came completely out of the blue, and is also what makes football interesting.
All I have done is try to establish who the winners and losers are likely to be by applying a bit of analysis to the facts. Some fans - especially in north-east Lincolnshire - will accuse me of bias towards my own club and against theirs, but I can assure everyone that is not the case. Every comment I have made is an unbiased opinion based upon a hopefully fair and wide-ranging analysis of as many facts as I can collect. Anyone in any doubt as to the truth of that statement needs only to revisit some of the predictions I made for the future of Lincoln City a few years ago.
When trying to establish where every club is likely to finish, I have to place some clubs at the top and some at the bottom. It is only natural that the supporters of the clubs tipped for success will compliment our preview, and those tipped for failure will feel resentment and indignation. But I will reiterate: there will be winners and losers, and delusion will never change that. Furthermore, I cannot predict that twenty-four clubs will finish joint-first.
Around forty years ago, one of football's all-time greats Jimmy Hill closed Match of the Day on the opening day of the season by saying. "..and no matter how badly your club fared today, they are only two points behind the leaders. Goodnight."
That is paraphrasing from a fading memory, but that is what keeps everyone rushing eagerly through the turnstiles, and why a preview can be no more or less than that: a preview.
The thing is: what have I got right, and what have I got wrong?
The next nine months will tell us.
