Two home games, and two good wins! Ah, it’s good to be back. Of course being in second place at this stage is fairly meaningless, but it’s a lot nicer to be able to say that than having to say “well, being at the bottom of the table doesn’t mean anything at this stage”.

On the whole I like the look of the side now. Doherty in particular is a great addition, so it was a bit worrying seeing him limping off on Saturday.

I also like the fact that we’ve had 4 different goal scorers over the two games (and a disallowed goal from Furs). Having Rowlands, Gallen, Birch and Moore get goals early in the season has to be good for their confidence, and it would be great not to have to rely too much on Furlong, as realistically we’ll be very lucky if he manages to repeat last season’s tally.

I still worry about Santos’ distribution (eyes to the ground, and kick the ball as hard as you can), and his moments of madness, but he put in some pretty solid tackles on Saturday and looked not too bad for a change. On the other hand, he was responsible for the Ipswich goal on Tuesday! I’m looking forward to Evatt being fit…

Possibly the dodgiest performer on Saturday was Rose, who looked like his mind was elsewhere most of the time. He doesn’t really convince as a left-back, and again, I am looking forward to seeing Milanese, who presumably is lacking a bit of fitness at the moment. For some reason he’s not in the squad list yet, so I hope there’s not some dodgy business going on there.

Of the new boys, Nygaard really didn’t impress me against Ipswich, and I’m still making my mind up about Moore. He looks a little bit lazier than Furlong when it comes to chasing hopeless causes, and doesn’t have the pace that I was expecting, but perhaps he’s not quite fit yet, and he took his goal quite nicely thank you. It always annoys me when players give up on things too easily, which a few were doing on Saturday. One of the many great attributes of Furlong is that he’s as likely to be closing down the keeper in the 89th minute as he is in the 5th, and when he does so, he always looks like he means it. Moore only came on in half way through the game, but he still looked half-hearted at best in those sorts of situations. Maybe it’s just his style, but realistically we probably need chasers and hard workers, not prima donnas (unless he turns out to be really really good and scores 30 goals, in which case he can hang around the opposition half smoking a fag for all I care…).

There were still a few niggles left over from last season, like Birch still missing a little something, and Rowlands blowing hot & cold - one minute really up for it, the next minute not bothering to run into position or ask for the ball. But there were also some positives, like Gallen looking a bit sharper than he did last season, and Ainsworth being fit again. Even Bean looked a bit better for the minute or two that he was on the pitch…

Overall, my expectations for the season are still modest, but I must admit that I’ve been pleasantly surprised so far.