STE lead scout, two of his team, picked up club legends Rhodes and Cameroon early Sunday morning drove to the 24hr Tesco picked up some Haribo for the road and set off to the STE Player auction. The frist of the season, always an interesting one and rumoured to include some local talent, overseas flair and some unknown exciting young players. The Manager had released funds, havng been quiet on the transfer market STE needed to make an impact early to have a chance of competing this season. 

6 hours later the team returned with a packed car, Cameroon in the boot and Rhodes with new young keeper Granger on his knee. 

A successful day out - bank balance drained, manager happy and the squad at maximum capacity. 

Polo - A much needed level head in MF - 3/21 - will do a job this season and actually comes into support an incredibly weak midfield.  Experienced enough playing abroad, but might need time to settle into Scottish football. 

Abe - 1/14 DF - Another one in the recent long line of highly capable STE defenders. Hoping to pick up where Wall leaves off in a season or two. It means STE will play this season with 6 highly capable defenders. Abe will be heavily involved with the Training system until the SESL cup kicks off. 

Heston Granger - 0/6GK - STE have made no secret that they have been looking for a Norway GK replacement for 2 seasons. It hasnt happened, talented GKs still in short supply across SL, rarely traded and overpriced. STE were tipped to recruit a 0/5 at oldies trade in next week, but having seen Granger, the travelling team believed he was the perfect fit. Heston will be given the full season to get into shape, up to speed and experience the club and will take over fully from Norway next season. 

All in all, a great day out, some good grub and some great purchases to strengthen the squad. 

...from his duties as sponsor bid collector. 

Pre-season at STE is going slow. Our scouts are not doing a great job, no players highlighted, no trades made. We have our eye on a bit of talent rumoured to come up at auction soon, but otherwise we have sold a few TP and thats it. It did allow us to get max CP purchase in and we have brought in Bosman Larry - but honestly? he looks rubbish - no wonder he was free

We can see trading kicking off everywhere else though, which is worrying as teams improve their strength, their depth, their shape. Someone reminf me - how do we beat MOT?

We have a tough start to the season, fixtures arent kind, and with a couple of suspensions getting the early lineups right will be tricky.

We will be getting our sponsor bids in and hope to secure some end of season revenue, we have done well in recent seasons and its always a nice boost the bank balance.

One area i expect no improvement this season, is our ability to predict results - never copy our predictions!