[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?