Pre-Season friendlies announced & Long deal not far away

The club announced this afternoon the pre-season friendlies that they will be facing in preparation for the 2009/2010 Blue Square Premier campaign. As expected Peterborough and Millwall will be making trips to Broadhall Way, as well as League 1 side’s Brighton and Southend. The away trips include Chelmsford City, Cambridge City and as confirmed a week or so ago, Blue Square South outfit Woking. Seven games in just over 3 weeks for Graham Westley to put his squad through their paces as they look to win promotion to the football league.

The schedule looks good in my opinion. The home games will be good, competitive tests against football league opposition. Of course it will be interesting to see how George Boyd and Steve Morison fair against some familiar faces. The Brighton and Southend games look good too, but I doubt I’ll be making an effort to see all the home games, so I’ll probably just go to the Millwall and Peterborough games and see how the squad is fairing going into the new season. Our last game before the first league game of next season is away at Woking and that, again will be another tough game. Woking are hot favourites already to be promoted straight back to the BSP, as long as they don’t return by default in the AGM Cup.

One difference I have noticed is that so far less games have been organised against lower league clubs. Last season saw Boro making trips to places like Boreham Wood, Hitchin, Bognor Regis, Ware and Slough, just to name a few with Boro playing a game more or less every 2 days. This schedule looks far more organised and hopefully will be enough to give the squad a good start to the league season.

The signing of Stacy Long should be completed in the next few days or so. The former Ebbsfleet midfielder is currently on holiday after his release from the Kent club and has spoken about his situation.

“The club is obviously in a lot of trouble financially and it is unfortunate the team Liam built last year can not stay together. It is a real shame because there was a lot of potential there with young players who wanted to stay. I honestly believe everyone there last year did want to stay, including me. I don’t know how they are going to do next season. It was always tough for Liam anyway financially but now it is going to be much harder.” Long on Ebbsfleet

“I’m on holiday at the moment but I understand it is all going to be ironed out with Stevenage in the next couple of days”. On the move to Boro

It all sounds as if it’s a done deal. I assume as soon as Long comes back from his holiday then he’ll sign a contract and become Graham Westley’s 5th signing of the summer so far. Looks like his first game in a Boro shirt will be away against Chelmsford City on the 15th July.