Preseason 2026/27

[Gamble92]

8 minutes ago, THEfox said:

Wasn't there one against Spurs in Thailand more recently? Can't remember if it got cancelled though cos of a storm or summink 

Yeah Top insisted on flaunting his Premier League team in his country despite all the data suggesting it's probably not a good idea in the middle of their storm season.

 

Of course we weren't even a Premier League team by the time that summer came around.  Yet he insisted on giving newly relegated Leicester a trip round the globe in storm season in what was one of the most important pre seasons in history. 

 

Then again I feel like we call every pre season the most important in memory because of just how much they've destroyed us piece by piece. 

[coolhandfox]

PL play each other every season on tours abroad no one bats an eyelid.

[Gamble92]

55 minutes ago, THEfox said:

Wasn't there one against Spurs in Thailand more recently? Can't remember if it got cancelled though cos of a storm or summink 

Think everyone's forgetting we were already relegated by then. But it was planned as a Premier League club.

 

I think everyone's missing the point that those games abroad are to get money by giving them chance to see Premier League teams.

 

They don't arrange games with each other in England. 

[Jordan]

3 hours ago, Stadt said:

How many times have people said “why does this matter” over the years and - in fact - it has mattered?

 

It’s a bizarre thing to do, to me this smacks as if LCFC proposed this prior to when it was apparent we would be relegated - such is their lack of foresight 

You still haven’t given any good reason why this matters.

[Lambert09]

5 hours ago, Jordan said:

Why does it even matter what division the opposition is in? It’s a preseason friendly.

Because Burton haven’t forgotten when benalouanne attempted to murder one of their players in preseason! It’s got potential for a fofana leg break 

[Spanner73]

5 hours ago, FoxKent_88 said:

They probably don't know burton are L1 or have forgotten we are

When do we play Blaby & Whetstone & Narborough & Littlethorpe ? 

[Stadt]

52 minutes ago, Jordan said:

You still haven’t given any good reason why this matters.

Why don’t other teams do it then? Outside of contracted games abroad 

[Phil_Dunphy]

31 minutes ago, Lambert09 said:

Because Burton haven’t forgotten when benalouanne attempted to murder one of their players in preseason! It’s got potential for a fofana leg break 

Stephen Warnock, currently co-commentaring on BBC1 for the Canada match.

[Jordan]

4 hours ago, Stadt said:

Why don’t other teams do it then? Outside of contracted games abroad 

Again, you have no good reason why it is especially important that Burton Albion have to be in a division above or below Leicester City for either team to get what they need to get out of this friendly game.

 

Please just spend one minute thinking about what the main purposes of preseason friendlies are.

[Stadt]

7 hours ago, Jordan said:

Again, you have no good reason why it is especially important that Burton Albion have to be in a division above or below Leicester City for either team to get what they need to get out of this friendly game.

 

Please just spend one minute thinking about what the main purposes of preseason friendlies are.

I’ll side with the conventional wisdom of other club’s over Leicester City’s

[ozleicester]

Glad we are getting to test ourselves against bigger sides

[Lesta2014]

Guessing pre season will start 2 weeks on Monday? 2 weeks training before the first game?

[Corky]

7 hours ago, Jordan said:

Again, you have no good reason why it is especially important that Burton Albion have to be in a division above or below Leicester City for either team to get what they need to get out of this friendly game.

 

Please just spend one minute thinking about what the main purposes of preseason friendlies are.

It rarely, if ever, happens outside of overseas, money-spinning friendlies. I cannot get away from the conclusion that people organising this aren't fully aware exactly who we are playing next season.

[LCFCJohn]

57 minutes ago, Corky said:

It rarely, if ever, happens outside of overseas, money-spinning friendlies. I cannot get away from the conclusion that people organising this aren't fully aware exactly who we are playing next season.

This. When do EFL clubs ever play friendlies against a side in the same league that nobody outside of the clubs care about? Never.

 

It is either the case that the club genuinely haven’t realised Burton are in the same league or think despite being in the same league, we are in a ‘different leagues figuratively speaking which we aren’t. 

[CosbehFox]

Alongside them points made here, it’s such an easy win for fans to do a couple of different grounds each pre season. 

[Paninistickers]

42 minutes ago, LCFCJohn said:

This. When do EFL clubs ever play friendlies against a side in the same league that nobody outside of the clubs care about? Never.

 

It is either the case that the club genuinely haven’t realised Burton are in the same league or think despite being in the same league, we are in a ‘different leagues figuratively speaking which we aren’t. 

It's just yet more evidence, if any more were needed, that it's business as usual down there. You can here the turnkey machinery being cranked up, spluttering into life.

 

The managerless pre season bleep test socials. 

Play lower league Burton.

Arrange home glamour friendly against European team less well known than ourselves 

Alienate half the playing staff, refuse low ball offers to sell them, and then reintroduce into squad on September 1st

 

...rinse and repeat 

 

 

 

 

[Gamble92]

4 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

It's just yet more evidence, if any more were needed, that it's business as usual down there. You can here the turnkey machinery being cranked up, spluttering into life.

 

The managerless pre season bleep test socials. 

Play lower league Burton.

Arrange home glamour friendly against European team less well known than ourselves 

Alienate half the playing staff, refuse low ball offers to sell them, and then reintroduce into squad on September 1st

 

...rinse and repeat 

 

 

 

 

Exactly this. Yet we still have some absolutely oblivious and making excuses for all the obvious cracks again.

 

I can deal with the friendly with same division team if I thought the rest of the preparation would be well thought out. But this just stinks of the last few pre seasons again in a time we were promised a bit of change under a new structure. 

 

The pre season under Cooper was a ****ing disaster. Likewise Maresca, but we just about survived that, all be it after a very slow start performance wise. 

 

So if you're one of the ones saying same division team who cares, I think you should wake up a bit. It's another obvious going through the motions, no organisation, clueless decision that's going to yet again see us struggle unless something changes quickly. 

[Jordan]

2 hours ago, Stadt said:

I’ll side with the conventional wisdom of other club’s over Leicester City’s

 

2 hours ago, Corky said:

It rarely, if ever, happens outside of overseas, money-spinning friendlies. I cannot get away from the conclusion that people organising this aren't fully aware exactly who we are playing next season.

Again and again, you guys are complaining about something that does not matter.

 

“It doesn’t happen often” does not automatically make it bad. 
 

Give me an actual reason why this friendly all of a sudden becomes stupid just because we happen to be in the same division as Burton.

[Wsl]

1 hour ago, Gamble92 said:

Exactly this. Yet we still have some absolutely oblivious and making excuses for all the obvious cracks again.

 

I can deal with the friendly with same division team if I thought the rest of the preparation would be well thought out. But this just stinks of the last few pre seasons again in a time we were promised a bit of change under a new structure. 

 

The pre season under Cooper was a ****ing disaster. Likewise Maresca, but we just about survived that, all be it after a very slow start performance wise. 

 

So if you're one of the ones saying same division team who cares, I think you should wake up a bit. It's another obvious going through the motions, no organisation, clueless decision that's going to yet again see us struggle unless something changes quickly. 

Fine - but who do you suggest we play? It may be unusual if we were still in the PL, or even the CL. But we're in League 1, and we've got a decimated squad. Not that that's my worry - glad to see most move on. But given the squad we've got at the moment, and being realistic, who do people on here complaining about it being Burton and Northampton seriously suggest we should be playing instead? Who'd have us too, more to the point?

 

The pre-season tours of SE Asia against PL sides have long long since gone.  CL teams like Millwall or Stoke or whatever generally want to play European or PL teams, who in turn are ok with playing a lower league club in a pre-season. Don't see many of them queuing up to play us. PL youth teams/academies? OK for technical prep may be, but I wouldn't have though great prep for League 1. Some have suggested a lower tier tour of Europe - Belgian Pro League or Eredivisie, but also look at the losses we've still got - still a pre tax loss of 71.1 million. In the context of over 180 mill lost in the last three seasons. People would only moan then that we don't have the money to spend on those tours.

 

It's not making excuses - it's a damning indictment of our present position, but one thing is for sure - "normal" pre-season it ain't. Anyone who's got the hump because they think we could and should do better is arguably more oblivious to where we are right now.

[Gamble92]

40 minutes ago, Wsl said:

Fine - but who do you suggest we play? It may be unusual if we were still in the PL, or even the CL. But we're in League 1, and we've got a decimated squad. Not that that's my worry - glad to see most move on. But given the squad we've got at the moment, and being realistic, who do people on here complaining about it being Burton and Northampton seriously suggest we should be playing instead? Who'd have us too, more to the point?

 

The pre-season tours of SE Asia against PL sides have long long since gone.  CL teams like Millwall or Stoke or whatever generally want to play European or PL teams, who in turn are ok with playing a lower league club in a pre-season. Don't see many of them queuing up to play us. PL youth teams/academies? OK for technical prep may be, but I wouldn't have though great prep for League 1. Some have suggested a lower tier tour of Europe - Belgian Pro League or Eredivisie, but also look at the losses we've still got - still a pre tax loss of 71.1 million. In the context of over 180 mill lost in the last three seasons. People would only moan then that we don't have the money to spend on those tours.

 

It's not making excuses - it's a damning indictment of our present position, but one thing is for sure - "normal" pre-season it ain't. Anyone who's got the hump because they think we could and should do better is arguably more oblivious to where we are right now.

I get what you're saying, I said in itself booking a friendly with club in same division isn't the end of the world. But knowing how this club is run so badly, I just feel like this is another sign there's no organisation. 

 

To me organisation would be keeping us up to date with news as many smaller clubs than us do. It would be the leaders putting everything else on hold in to get in Seagrave and sort it out from June 1st. A manager would be in place. They'd be involved with the pre season fixtures. We'd have 6 or 7 well thought out fixtures booked. 

 

There's never any sign we are even attempting to do things right. A fixture like this isn't done by any other club and I just see it as another sign we haven't learned any lessons. 

 

Having said all that, I'll be at Burton in July. 

[davieG]

Or we picked Burton and Northampton because they're close and therefore cheap, Burton - small travel cost, no overnight stay,  Both no need to feed the players everyone's back to their own home for dinner.

[Jordan]

2 hours ago, Gamble92 said:

So if you're one of the ones saying same division team who cares, I think you should wake up a bit. It's another obvious going through the motions, no organisation, clueless decision that's going to yet again see us struggle unless something changes quickly. 

I have probably spent too much of my time debating on this thread that it doesn’t matter we have a preseason friendly against Burton in our division and I don’t think this in itself is some sort of indictment (the board still have to run this football club and they need to at least get something on the calendar).

 

However, I don’t want anyone to presume that just because I don’t see this friendly thing as a big issue, that I don’t think there’s a lot wrong with the club and that I have absolutely zero confidence in Aiyawatt, Rudkin, and the rest of the gang there to clean up this whole mess. (I would hope that anyone that can identify what my avatar is can at least deduce this. 🤪)

 

I’m much more upset about being in the same division as Burton in the first place, and all of the awful decisions that got us there. I hope that Burton is a good day out (twice) for our fans, and I would rather focus on the very many issues raised about the state of the club by many fans that are a lot more dedicated than I am — issues that they are still waiting on answers for weeks, months, and in some cases years.

Edited Saturday at 13:12 by Jordan
Typos/grammar

[CosbehFox]

1 hour ago, davieG said:

Or we picked Burton and Northampton because they're close and therefore cheap, Burton - small travel cost, no overnight stay,  Both no need to feed the players everyone's back to their own home for dinner.

Plenty of others outside of the division on the same basis. Lincoln, Chesterfield, Tamworth immediately spring to mind 

[Foxmeister]

17 hours ago, Spanner73 said:

When do we play Blaby & Whetstone & Narborough & Littlethorpe ? 

Usually the showpiece friendly is the home one immediately before the season starts.

[Corky]

1 hour ago, CosbehFox said:

Plenty of others outside of the division on the same basis. Lincoln, Chesterfield, Tamworth immediately spring to mind 

Walsall, Shrewsbury, Port Vale not a million miles away.