They might have a reasonable team these days...

...but our American cousins still know f*@k all about the beautiful game, as a column from the US Fox Sports network proves: "Germany will win, here's how". Right... I'm off to stick on some samba...

Edwards signs for Wrexham

Paul Edwards has signed for Wrexham, reports the Adver, agreeing to a one-year deal with the third division club. My suspicion that he wouldn't find a second division club proved right, although he thinks they will be fighting for promotion next year. Andy King says it's probably a good thing he did find a new club, as he was AWOL last week when he was supposed to start training again. But I think we've got to feel slightly short-changed by a player who got given a last chance by Swindon, and who was well backed by the fans. Yes, Town will get a one-third cut of any future transfer fee, but with his new deal being only for one year, you've got to wonder if we'll ever see anything for this promising player.

Browse Andy's menu

You can take a look at the current list of out-of-contract pro footballers if you want, by visiting the Professional Footballers' Association website. This is what Andy King's working his way through this summer, so if you spot a name you think could do a job at the County Ground, drop him a line :-) You'll need to register to see the list, mind.

Time for some new faces?

The Adver reports that the transfer embargo on Swindon Town is set to be lifted on Monday, meaning Andy King can look to bring a few new faces in. One player it seems will not be coming back is winger Paul Edwards, one of my great hopes for this season, who rumour has moving to Wrexham. We already knew he wanted to move north to be nearer friends and family; few of us thought he'd get a move, let alone be desperate enough to want to move to Wales, but there you have it. What’s not clear yet is if Town will get some kind of transfer fee for the lad, because of his age. Doubtless, all contributions remain welcome, out of administration or not.

Back on air?

OK... just kick this box a bit, fiddle with that bit of code a bit... aha! We're back on! As you can (hopefully) see, the layout's fixed, and this is the way things will be staying as we look forward and finally head into the 2002-03 season. Bear with me while the other pages on the site are updated to reflect the new look, and hang on for various new features to revise and replace stuff from last year. The team's back in pre-season training at Wanborough next month, so news is bound to pick up - you'll see it all reflected here. (By the way, if this isn't looking at all right, then it might be because your browser is old - this site looks best in Internet Explorer and Netscape 5.0 or better, Mozilla 1.0 or Opera. Well worth the upgrade, I'd say).

Umm... hang on... this is *all* wrong... I've just messed up the site layout, haven't I...

Oh well. Now the World Cup's over :-( daresay I've got some time to fix things up for the new season... bear with me, and Swindonlog 2.0 will return bigger, badder and lots better looking in a day or two. Or three.

Here's a sad one: the continuing tale of Paul Edwards. I already reckon Edwards is a bit of a muppet for both wanting to get closer to Manchester for his "personal reasons" this summer, when lower-league football is in crisis, and also for thinking that his performances last season were really enough to get him a new club. Surely he's not going to compound all that by not turning up for pre-season training?

The fixtures are out and, frankly, we couldn't have a much tougher start to the season. Barnsley are the first visitors to the County Ground, on the opening day (August 10) followed by trips to Chesterfield and Blackpool. The thugs of Cardiff decend on Swindon on August 24, with a bank holiday Monday trip to Brentford just 48 hours later. The first home banker (you'd hope) comes against Stockport County on August 31. If we do well against this lot, our season will be off to a flyer. If we don't... umm, well, then it won't be off to a flyer, and I confidently predict the protest noticeboard over at My Only Swindon will be busy again with folk moaning we should be doing better. You heard it here first.

It feels a little bizarre to be writing this while watching the sublime Brazil in the World Cup on telly... but it's fixtures day today. We'll learn around 10am how next season will shape up, with the trips (and visits) from Bristol and Cheltenham likely to be high on many folks' must see list. On that note, the official site is claiming around 1,550 season tickets have now been sold, and that Alan Reeves is set to sign on the dotted line for another season at the County Ground.

Whoops... sorry for the outage over the last few days. Taking a leaf from our beloved team's books, I neglected to pay the domain name fee in time, and it ran out on me on Friday. Bills are now paid. It won't happen again. Promise.

There were several thousand empty seats for England's fantastic win over Argentina today - and part of the problem is FIFA has messed up with the technology. The servers running Fifatickets.com (Nettime server stats here) can't cope with demand for tickets. FIFA claim those pesky fans are (imagine!) staying logged onto the site until tickets for a particular game go on sale. So now they're logging everyone off after 15 minutes, and the site is running smoothly, right? Um... well, no.

Great news for football fans, and especially those in Bury: The Shakers have been saved (a CVA that pays just 10p in the pound) and fans have taken control through their supporters' trust.