News round-up

Not a bad week all round. Corky is finally on board following unnecessarily protracted negotiations. He had the de-rigour 'couple of clubs interested' in him but always 'wanted to come here' because 'it's a massive club' with a 'great set-up'. Bless his agent, he's been teaching him well.

With the countdown to the season truly on, agents, players and clubs start getting jittery and the odd surprise signing trundles in. It looks like Michael Standing may be our wildcard this season, should we manage to negotiate the wage-cap.

The season is fast approaching. Fixtures are being changed on a hourly basis to cope with the Setanta intrusion. We're at the stage where its probably safest to phone the club every morning to check whether there's a game on. With Eastliegh slain on Tuesday (god love their keeper) the pre-season gets serious with the visit of Bournemouth on Friday. The game is on despite the Kassam becoming a makeshift refuge for flood victims - apparently an old people's home was evacuated and taken to the ground. The sight of balding septuagenarians hobbling around the ground triggered a wild rumours that Gavin Johnson was about to be re-signed.

Oxblogger is packing his yellow and blue bucket and spade and heading off on his holidays this week. He'll be back in a week to cobble together some sort of season preview. Whisper it quietly, but he's almost starting to look forward to it.