Three pre-season friendly fixtures announced

Brexit means Brexit.

Squad will be knackered before the season starts.

Who needs to play Real Madrid in pre-season friendlies when you have these fixtures?

I'm a bit disappointed though there isn't a match v Altrincham, AFC Bury. Halifax Town or Stalybridge Celtic.

We are just piss-poor at every aspect of professional sports.

Tranmere will be next, with a 2nd XI at Southport - Billy Crellin and 10 trialists.

I see Stuart Armstrong has been released by Southampton. Always a tidy, neat player with an eye for a goal and an assist. Plymouth it is then.

We may even find some roubles under the beds and US dollars down the settees, which we could give to Thelwell.

Then down to the port and sail back on Usmanov's impounded Yacht. Any sailors out there?

They even have a casino, at the Rioch Arena, and you can park your car, on sight just as long as you have a bank card!

I hate Pre-Season friendly's, but I suppose I'll go to the opening game at Bramley Moore, if Real Madrid, come to town!

Yet teams fly all over the world to cram as many pre-season games as they can, when surely the fresher players are at the start of the season, the better.

A European team would be good.

If Real, then it would probably be best to play their B Team, Real Madrid Castilla. Although I don't pay too much attention to the outcome of pre-season results, I think playing the Spanish champions might be a bit of a reach. But I like the idea.

Incidentally, they play their league matches in a 6000-seater stadium built on Real's training complex. I think City did similar?

I keep saying we should have considered building a smaller stadium on Goodison Park for the U23s and U18s. Nothing spectacular, but it would have been a good legacy in my opinion and could have been wrapped up in the Everton Stadium project. I had a look at the Goodison Legacy plans:

Goodison Legacy Project is a new mixed-use regeneration scheme consisting of ten new development blocks on the land currently occupied by the existing Goodison Park Stadium in Liverpool. The scheme includes affordable and social housing, a community health and medical centre, residential care, an enterprise building, a new education centre, offices, community-focused retail, three residential towers and a park.

Another shout might be to give Brands a ring to play PSV?

James, similar for me and a lot of my friends and family.

I remember in the 1994 World Cup, when I was home, there were more rooting for Ireland than England.

I don't dislike England apart from when I have to sit watching them surrounded by cockney supporters where I now live singing their RAF Bomber songs, not taking any notice of the match.

For years, and probably due to my roots, I would rather we had a GB team, just like we do in Athletics and for the Davis Cup in Tennis.

But I am a British mongrel.

I imagine some of the foreign trips are a welcome change of scenery annd exposure to new ideas.

People do understand that, at the sort of fitness levels required, you will lose it at an alarming rate in the off-season and then restore it much more slowly once pre-season starts?

Or do some think it's actually like themselves having a couple of months break from huffing and puffing at the weekly 5-a-side with the lads?

I get what you say, Si, but when you've got a thin squad, concentrating on the players' fitness and technique adjustments, chucked in with some local games, could be just as good as jetting around.

Let's face it, every year a lot of the comments are how slow we play, and they can't pass a ball to a teammate when not under pressure.