On the Lichfield road sat in the van. There is traffic. The dogs are hot. I’m hot. Everybody is hot. But not Linda Lease-Audi in her white Audi 4×4 who is aggressively dinking around inches off my back bumper in some hurry to do whatever Linda does in her 40k white fat arse carrier. Of course in another world I would have gently tapped my brakes and annoyed her a bit but Linda isn’t important today. She can wiggle her eyebrows all she wants. Now she’s shouting something but my exhaust has fallen off and it’s noisy and the van is full of fumes. She has got purple hair. Nuno has signed a contract extension. I’m asking the woman in Tesco for a pouch of tobacco..

‘Have you got the dead mans leg?’

‘No only Hole in throat and open lung surgery’

‘Ok can I have the Hole in throat packet please’

There is a dichotomy here, I can feel it in my balls. It was sunny last year when our team buggered off to mountain land to do some of that sexy stuff we watched on a shitty GoPro somebody had wired up. Memories eh? They did double team sessions and then went out to dink the ball around some other Euro knobhead team we’d never heard of. It’s happening again. I watched Jota skilling up wearing a pair of flip flops. I saw Costa looking like he had found a magic crystal of henchness and was waxing around with his new muscles. He’s had the Coady trim. Short, business like. A fighting trim.

Coady looks cored up to fuck, looks like he has taken on some advice to ditch the muscle and concentrate on the mobility angle. But you wont move him off the ball. We will see Coady making attacking runs into midfield this season. Trust me. Mobile? He was quite nifty any way but now? Has Nuno given him the green light to impose himself on the upcoming seasons fixtures? I think he has. What does that mean for the team? We may see him chasing down potential attacks from faster opposition players. I see this. Linda Lease-Audi reminds me of a Moth booping a lightbulb. What’s the matter with her. Fucking Star Trek eyebrows, Jesus Christ.

Rui Patricio has come to our club. I’d never heard of him before but he is a goalkeeper and Portuguese so of course I wouldn’t have. He’s very handsome and debonair of course. We have a great looking team apart from Doherty who constantly looks like he just remembered he’s left the cooker on. Patricio eh? I watched some YouTube videos which is the extent of my ‘research’. So automatically I get gigabytes of these graceful, beautiful swallow dives to all areas of his goal. Brave and creative movements where he saves the day again and again for his team. I like him straight away of course. Whatever incentives Uncle Jorge and Uncle Jeff have given him it worked. At least he wont get attacked at Molineux by masked thugs waving belt buckles around. It will be Brian and Gary with a protest bed sheet waving it around shouting incoherently about…something. The biggest injury will be sheet burn. Welcome Rui.

The other addition that thine hand of Nuno the wisest one rested upon is Raul Jiminez. Back to YouTube. Whoah. He can bang them in. But he does other things too. Sexy things with his feet. This lad looks up as well. Gareth Southgate. Shit. I’m struck by that hollow feeling in me belly remembering last nights match against Croatia. God almighty. Croatia Modric is spouting his propaganda on the TV. We ‘underestimated’ Croatia. Fuck off. England beat themselves, we always do. You lot are just bystanders to the greatest tragedy drama in the world. That of the ‘English Footballer’. It’s a dramatic live production of many acts and characters. In some of the most beautiful parts of the world and on the grandest occasions.

Alas my friends, the beauty of it all. Who would fucking swap being a participant in one of these displays? Who would give up the chance to feel this way? We lost but fucking hell we lived. I read the joy of Scottish and Irish fans, the Welsh too. How they bray and celebrate the loss of this team of men who at least kissed the sweet lips of that most troublesome, coy and shyest of Championships. The denizens of those countries may laugh and carouse. But at least we loved and hoped, just for a second. While you distil your bitter thoughts under cloud filled skies and in the greyest of lives.

The close season was filled with this madness. I mean those dull rumblings from last season are still echoing off the houses around here for me. The ghosts of those Championship teams still wail around. I’m sure that when our season kicks off that the wails will be silent for a while. I mean, Cardiff excepted. I don’t see them adopting any philosophy beyond the snap, crackle and pop of last season. I wonder whether I may like to see Cardiff play us again. I have a strange affinity to them I think. Their ugliness makes my team more beautiful. We play a team in Switzerland. Basle. They are a nice team and nice players. Their supporters are nice and everything is still sunny I suppose. We beat them 2-1. Willy Boly clearance at one point. That man knows football. I see him, after football studying in some beautiful European University, sipping coffee outside a Café. But our team are having fun. They are laughing. They look chilled out. Nuno looks pensive. But Nuno? We have your back. How could we not after last season? What you did for us. How you made us feel.

Why did Pickford keep booting the ball upfield? Was it a collapse of our midfield? Would you have taken Kane off? Stirling? Post Mortem football. I was very proud of the team and Southgate. Losing in the semi final is the most English of things. The world cup is a brilliant thing. But why would you need a Cup made of gold to underline that you played some teams and won against all of them. Who were the best team? Belgium? Spain implosions. Argentina. The cup doesn’t represent anything but a very abstract idea I suppose, that through some variable route the team managed to win most of its matches and lose none or one. I’m starting to warm back up now. Soon it will be the opening day. The end of the tabula rasa of everybody on nil points. What stories will it have for us this season? It fucking terrifies me to be honest. I’m not scared of the other teams. Not a bit. I’m scared at what amazing or terrifying things will happen as we traverse the country watching Wolves. Last season was fucking crazy. Now? In the Premier? The volume of insanity will be cacophonous. OK I’m warming up.

If you enjoy these blogs then click the picture below and peruse the book of this thing. 265 pages of me ‘Going on a bit’ about what happened last season and more.