After the phoney war of the pre-season friendlies, the real action starts in earnest on Saturday, with United making the trip to Lincolnshire for the second successive season. This time round it’s Boston who have the privilege of welcoming the Us, on a day that is likely to be as hot as Lincoln was last season.

No-one really knows what to expect from United this term, nor many of the other teams in the newly named Coca Cola Championship League Two bollocks. With twelve new signings in the squad, of whom seven or eight could be realistic contenders for first team places, it will certainly be a new -look United that takes to the pitch on Saturday. Chris Tardif is the likely starter between the sticks, and Dave Mackay will almost certainly be the preferred right back. Leo Roget will start in central defence, possibly alongside Jon Ashton, although Dave Woozley received a knee injury during training and could be out for several weeks. Matt Robinson, the Players’ Player of the Year, will be a familiar face at left back.

The remainder of the line-up depends to a large extent on the tactics and formation that Graham Rix chooses. Pre-season indications are that the players are more comfortable with a traditional 4-4-2, rather than Rix’s preferred more adventurous 4-3-3. At least he doesn’t use wingbacks. Assuming it’s the former formation, we will probably see our boy, the ROS Chris Hackett starting on the right wing. Rob Wolleaston and Paul Wanless are the most likely centre-half pairing, with either Terry Parker or Danny Brown on the left wing. We suspect that Parker has pushed himself ahead in the pecking order because of his stronger defensive play. Up front will almost certainly feature the duo of Tommy Mooney and new captain Lee Bradbury.

Boston themselves have been no slouches on the transfer front, bringing in ex-pineapple-head Jason Lee from Falkirk and Martin Carruthers from Macclesfield to boost their front-line. In addition they’ve also got a new young midfielder with a bit of a pedigree, name of Paul Gascoigne. As Gazza’s signing is more likely to be a nice little gimmick to sell a few season tickets, and has he has allegedly been suffering from food poisoning all week, we don’t think that he will feature much, if at all, on Saturday. Which is a shame, as Wanny is doubtless looking forward to introducing him to the rigours of basement footy.

And so to prediction time. Who knows? In keeping with our traditional pre-season optimism, which generally lasts until half-time on the first day, we’re plumping for an Oxford win. Kiss of death, but we’ll say 2-1 to United.