This Week’s Headlines

The T&A Website is showing quite a few City stories at the moment. The reason we pulled out of the race to sign Shaw from Halifax was the £60k price-tag, City are planning their own academy in Mexico and… we are going to be on TV on Monday October 20th - away to Darlington (which bags us a nice £10k windfall). And McCall is not going to Hearts.

Team Talk, meanwhile, bring us Starosta’s hunger for first team football and City’s increased wage bill.

Young Right Back – Understudy for Arnison?

City have a young right back named Shaun Densmore, recently released by Everton, joining in with pre-seaon training. The Official BCFC site carries a copy of the T&A story. He’s 19, he was Academy Player-of-the-year in 2006-7 season and he has just completed a one-year senior contract at Everton, where he was unable to break into the first team and ended up playing reserve football. McCall said “Obviously we’re only training at the moment but we’ll have him here for a couple of weeks and see what we think.”

There is also a mention in this story of Darren Moore going to Barnsley.

What Should City’s Line-up Be?

Well, we need some more signings so it’s a bit hard to predict what the line-up will be – who knows which players are yet to arrive? For a start, we need a ‘keeper. We probably need a back-up right back and another striker to compete with Topp, Thorne and Conlon for a place in the starting line-up. The lack of a defensive-shield-type midfielder and an out-and-out left-winger is a bit worrying too.

New Keeper

          Arnison       Lee      Clarke      Heckingbottom

        Colbeck   Bullock   McLaren    Brandon/Nix

Thorne Topp

Subs: McLaughlin, Daley, Brandon/Nix, Bower, Conlon

I reckon this side is not too far from the one McCall might pick (not for the first two games, obviously – Colbeck is still suspended following his dismissal against the Football Franchise that is MK:Dons). McCall may well prefer Bower to Clarke and Daley to Colbeck in his first-choice team, but I reckon Clarke and Colbeck out-performed Daley and Bower last season so they should probably start in ‘pole position’.

If you disagree with my team selection, why not post your own in the comments below?

No News is Good News… I Hope!

From the Telegraph & Argus: McCall urges patience. I’m hoping this means that the reason we haven’t had any news recently (bar the Arnison signing) is that, as a club, we are playing our cards close to our chest. This story is worth reading for the comments alone. The inaptly named ‘Mr Sensible’ seems to be either (a) playing devil’s advocate (b) an internet troll or (c) a Leeds fan. This is word-for-word: “Face facts A failing club with bad ideas and brain(limited)washed fans.” It’s a bit rich for Mr Sensible to accuse City fans of having limited brains when he writes like that. Punctuate boy, punctuate!

Less happily, it seems Boulding is going up a league rather than join BCFC. Story here.

There’s more City news on the Boy From Brazil site here: BfB, including: the news that McCall is still interested in ex-Sheffield Wednesday ‘keeper Rob Burch; the interesting fact that Arnison was wanted by Port Vale and Darlington – but still chose to join City; and this story about Chester’s transfer embargo that might rule them out of the running for Luke Beckett. Keep an eye out later this week for a post on last season’s stats and what they mean.