Dear Diasborians,
Hope you're all well.
I'm going on holiday next week and by the time I'm back the season will be underway so I guess we'd better start planning for the Preview Writers roster.
I'm struggling to commit for this season but may be ok later in the year so I think I'll leave myself off for now and maybe pick up the FA Cup 3rd round and any ad hoc ones that need doing. I note that OFB is a little unwell also, so we might need one or two others to put their hands up this season.
Please could everyone interested let me know by replying on this thread. Ideally I'll need to put the roster together next Monday or Tuesday.
Many thanks.
(PS Werder, I couldn't see how to create a new season Forum so have just put his into the 2025/26 season).
Count me in Andy, but with a couple of caveats. I will be under the knife again myself in early August, so please don't allocate any games to me until maybe the last week in August. Also I will be unavailable for practically the entire month of October, on tour in France.
I am available for a few matches. I would prefer teams that I have not written about earlier.
Up the Boro!
Andy
I'm a bit of a sick note myself at the moment, but I will try and pick up any matches going spare as and when they occur. If we get stuck it might be fun to follow the local journos and ask AI to do a few. And if you ask it to preview a particular Boro game in the style of say Enid Blyton or Harold Pinter it will produce something amusing and maybe even surprising.
Count me in.
I might even give Len’s suggestion a go. My eldest has set up a Boro news column using AI which is often quite good but also makes some strange mistakes. Updating this towards a particular match should be possible but I don’t promise anything.
UTB
Thanks Andy, I’m good for previews - though got back from holiday and discovered my laptop’s ssd (hard disk) had a rating of bad and life expectancy of 0% - which even the most optimistic would deem not good.
Anyway, posting on my iPhone (which is slow to type) but new disk should arrive tomorrow after spending the last few days backing up and preparing for installing a new disk - I will set up a new 2026-27 board once it’s back in business
btw AI google is panicking and keeps telling me to turn the laptop off before it seizes up but often changes its mind depending on my responses - I find it’s helpful but the ultimate echo chamber on IT matters and also prone to diagnosing me with any number of exotic illnesses…
Count me in as usual, Andy. I have two requests:
a) If possible, like Jarkko, I’d like to cover sides I haven’t previewed in the last two seasons, if at all possible. But it’s not absolutely essential, if needs must.
b) I could probably do the preview for the season opener v Lincoln. After that, if my eye recovers sufficiently from my retina op I’ll be in the USA from 24 August to 5th, so I won’t able to contribute until our away game v Birmingham on 19 September.
Cheers
If you can all put up with my tedious ramblings, I’m happy to contribute a few starters. I don’t necessarily need the Preston games, as I can ask PNE Dave for his thoughts and add them as a post below the starter.
@clive-hurren That’s very kind, Clive. Thank you. I think all contributors do a remarkable job of producing quality previews - it’s astonishing really, the depth of skill and knowledge on this Forum.
Just to let you know that I've now successfully cloned my soon to be deceased hard drive and replaced it with a new one - which means I've now been able to created the new 2026-27 Forum and moved this Preview Writers Roster post into it - it also means any new threads can be made in this 2026-27 Forum.
btw Felt a bit odd typing 2027 given it's still only July - I've got other preseason tasks to undertake on Diasboro and some tidying up for last season too in the coming weeks - so good to get my laptop up and running again.
Although, I'm planning a upgrade to Windows 11 today after adding some extra memory to my ageing laptop - which will hopefully be coaxed through another season.
Incidentally, I'm beginning to appreciated the merits of AI support as it does speed up solving problems rather than trawling through IT forums and sites - if you know the right follow-up question to ask it is extremely efficient. I would say these AI tools are kind of knowledge without wisdom or experience at the moment where the user is basically training it to be better.
Maybe users are essentially unwittingly building a future where they are no longer needed...
Just to add - after adding the new 2026-27 Forum, I also needed to include this forum in the Recent Posts list - otherwise any posts made in this forum are not shown. Usually a simple click of a tickbox but on this occasion it failed when updating and created a obscure terse error message.
Googling the error provided endless posts with checklists to work through that seemed rather time-consuming and a scattergun approach. I turned again to my trusty AI assistant and whilst it proved quite problematic to solve - it eventually found a solution by giving me some code to place in a particular file to revert to an older Wordpress tool and a plugin to install to clear the Wordpress site's memory cache. Would never have been able to solve that, let alone relatively quickly by just googling sites and ploughing through possible solutions!
Thanks, yet again, Werder for all of your behind-the-scenes work on our behalf. This is from an appreciative ignoramus who understood scarcely a word of your last two posts