Not sure I agree about the defence shaping up. Everything still seems wide open from what I have seen, especially on the flanks. And some worrying signs of the centre being breached quite easily by pace, notwithstanding the pace we can deploy ourselves to recover. But that's the problem for me, we tend to favour recovery rather than prevention.

I'm also not getting carried away one little bit by recent developments. It'll take 10 solid performances to convince me this isn't another one of our purple patches that leads directly into a ludicrous injury crisis and subsequent collapse. Odds of that are 100 to 1 on compared to the alternative. Here we are again, asking if after 12 seasons this is finally it, a consistent turnaround in our performances. I have hope but zero confidence.