[spireitematt]

Right then I'm going to do a predication on where I think teams will finish in the forthcoming season.

1. Chesterfield (probably being overly optimistic)
2. AFC Fylde
3. Wrexham
4. Bromley
5. Solihull Moors
6. Harrogate Town
7. Stockport County
8. Yeovil Town
9. Hartlepool United
10. Dover Athletic
11. Dagenham & Redbridge
12. Torquay United
13. Barnet
14. Aldershot Town
15. Notts County
16. Barrow
17. Boreham Wood
18. Eastleigh
19. Ebbsfleet United
20. Chorley
21. FC Halifax
22. Sutton United
23. Woking
24. Maidenhead United

[SaltergateBorn]

You must let me know what medication you`re on, Matt: I`m thinking I could do with some of it myself.

[Dancingwilldoit]

You can get behind me SGB it must be "youth elixir".
One thing we all learned last year is you cant predict anything in this league. I predict us to finish 12th because there are 12 letters in Chesterfield.
The teams with the least number of letters are Woking Barrow and Barnet so one of them will come top or finish 6th.

[Devongone]

I think that when Matt looks down to see which shoes he is wearing he can see more than just the toes poking out. As Dancing says we are predicting the completely unpredictable, so I'll have a go too .......


1. AFC Fylde (They are ambitious, have made some good signings, but have also lost good players like Hardy and Angol.)
2. Dagenham & Redbridge (They've got some money and unfathomably want to get back to the EFL without a crowd.)
3. Solihull Moors (They've kept Tim Flowers and signed McCallum.)
4. Wrexham (Always want to go up, plenty of signings, maybe this'll be the year, who knows?)
5. Harrogate Town (Signing Jon Stead, even at 61, shows continuing ambition.)
6. Barnet (A league club, with some improving players, sixth is the worst they'll do IMO.)
7. Hartlepool (They're trying, Kabamba guarantees goals, and they should be EFL too.)
8. Boreham Wood (Ambitious young manager has made several signings to put them back in the picture.)
9. Chesterfield (Anything could happen. I predict Sheri will leave for relegation certs Bury in November. Anywhere between 7th and 24th.)
10. Ebbsfleet United (Wise manager, had a clear out, made some signings, but they need to keep paying their players or...)
11. Barrow (Evo will hold them together if nobody pinches him.)
12. Bromley (They've made some good signings, don't think they'll be lower than halfway.)
13. Stockport County (Good manager, some good players, will the hybrid between full and part-time work???)
14. Eastleigh (Losing MCallum has to be a huge deal)
15. Dover Ath (Some good signings, manager ambitious, but losing Brundle to Dagenham will reflect in the table IMO.)
16. Torquay (If Johnson stays and his son stays at Bristol this is the worst they'll do, but is Chairman to be trusted?
17. Yeovil (Experienced at this level, but they used to be the most stable of clubs .... used to be ....)
18. Sutton Utd (Doswell will be almost impossible to replace, looks as though they'll struggle.)
19. Maidenhead (Don't think they want to go down and that's a big thing.)
20. Aldershot (A lot of re-building for the manager to do, but usually they are looking up not down .....)
21. Woking (Boing, boing boing!)
22. Chorley (First go at this level isn't it, could this year's Havant.)
23. Notts County (Guessing adminstration and Dennis will score 20 in a sadly disastrous season, but they might win it too.)
24. Halifax (Lost their manager and the most skillful player in this league.)

So that's my pathetic effort. How I ever won the Predication League I'll never know. Certainly anything I knew seemed fairly irrelevant.

Russ Penn in the Non-League Paper fancied us and Fylde to go up .........

[spireitematt]

I'm a glass half full person. Anything can happen and we should all be optimistic going into the season because if we were all pessimistic and on a downer then would there be any point in even competing? We need to go in to every game thinking we can win it and play without fear.

[Devongone]

I don't think I'm in the running for a place, but I play to win - or there's no point playing.

[SaltergateBorn]

I agree entirely, Dev. Anybody who enters a competition should try to win it – as long as they do it within the rules - or there`s no point in entering and they`re being disrespectful to all the other competitors. There`s a world of difference, though, between thinking you `can` win and thinking you `will ` win it.

I genuinely admire and envy your optimism, Matt, but at the risk of being facetious (again) you could say that a pessimist can never be disappointed; an optimist can rarely be anything but. Personally, the only thing I`m prepared to predict with any confidence about the National League for the coming season is that it`ll be just as completely unpredictable as it was last season.

For what it`s worth – which is probably very little – according to Oddschecker the bookies have us as pretty much joint favourites along with Fylde and with Notts County a sliver outside us. They had us as favourites at the start of last season, though, and look how that worked out.

With more and more full-time clubs in it, this league is getting more and more competitive every year, but if you twisted my arm into making predictions I`d probably go as far as the following (based on nothing whatsoever apart from gut feelings):

• Wrexham to win it (it`s got to be their turn soon).
• Us to finish in the play-offs.
• Notts County to struggle more than expected by many (most do the first season down).

And I don`t even have any confidence whatsoever in any of those.

[Devongone]

Bizarrely a couple of times in Matt's Predication Game last season I did stop playing to win and didn't do any worse, but in active sports and games you've got a guaranteed trier in me ...... if not an eternal optimist. To win when you've only got half a glass and your opponent's is full you've got to appraise what you've got realistically and make better use of it than him. The best player doesn't always win and as Boris Becker kept pointing out at Wimbledon "your opponent will make mistakes too." I used to bat alongside several glass half-full batsmen and they mostly seemed to end up back in the dressing-room before me bemoaning their ill-luck.

Orient didn't make many on-field changes from their unsuccessful first season to their winning second season at this level. Solihull had a wonderful second half to a season on Tim Flowers' arrival and he too didn't make many changes over the summer before last season's promotion push. So I don't disagree with Sheri's policy of trying to make only judicious changes; it's simply that so far they don't look that judicious to me and several very good non-league players who became available have been snapped up by other clubs at our level who aren't any better financed than us.

It isn't easy to make predictions in a division in which Notts County might win the whole thing and could equally well go out of business is it?

[Dancingwilldoit]

I'm not a pessimist but the the one thing I would bet my life savings on is that we will not win the league (watch us win it now).
We might just sneak in the playoffs but unless we have some incoming players capable of putting the ball in the net we wont do very well.
I know Boden came in and scored a few for us last season but is he a consistent 25 goals + type player even at our level? I dont think so. If he gets injured we dont have any back up other than Shaw who just cant seem to find the net or a couple of our youngsters who might find themselves being thrown in the deep end like last season.
Denton seems to have blotted his copy book with Sheridan and will miss the start of the season. I dont think he fits in with his style of play but it was because it worked by accident last season that we had a good finish. Will JS bite the bullet or will Denton be shipped out on loan?
Whatever happens its only 2 weeks on Sat to the big ko.

[spireitematt]

I understand where everybody is coming from. This is a tough, unpredictable league, we only have to look at the results of last season to see how anybody can beat anybody in this division and that form, league positions and doesn't matter how big a team is or used to be as that all goes out the window.

Biggest problem for us last season was we drew far too many games and we couldn't keep a lead in certain games and would just capitulate, we can't afford to do that this forthcoming season. Need to stay in the Top 7 to have any chance of winning this league or getting playoffs. The one problem with this division is there is no transfer window so we can sign players up until March but you can also lose players to other teams in the same division.

---

Bizarrely a couple of times in Matt's Predication Game last season I did stop playing to win and didn't do any worse, but in active sports and games you've got a guaranteed trier in me ...... if not an eternal optimist. To win when you've only got half a glass and your opponent's is full you've got to appraise what you've got realistically and make better use of it than him. The best player doesn't always win and as Boris Becker kept pointing out at Wimbledon "your opponent will make mistakes too." I used to bat alongside several glass half-full batsmen and they mostly seemed to end up back in the dressing-room before me bemoaning their ill-luck.

Did they slog the ball to try and get 6 runs?