The Man was handed a window to 2007 on Saturday, and it wasn’t pretty.

A couple of pitiful goals conceded, most of the game left to chew on against a side that look all right. It was the perfect scenario for the kind of 5-0 away drubbing we got used to.

Thankfully, our current lads swallowed that and held their own – no mean feat given Cardiff have somehow gone from certain liquidation to being able to afford Belluz. Still, their ground sucks. Even for another one of the Legoland fortresses, it looks abysmal.

And don’t bring up the name. If Cardiff spent anything more than a chomp on coming up with ‘Cardiff City Stadium’ then they should’ve been left to go to the wall in the summer.

• Ignoring us boring Boro’ into submission, The Man is still perplexed how the likes of Super Chrissy Martin, David Foxy and Oli Johnson are expected to be match fit.

They have only played a handful of minutes between them. No amount of training is going to make up for not playing a proper game, even a reserve game. Surely that’s why it’s taken Steven ‘The Smudge’ Smith several games to get going properly.

And when the time comes that we need Foxy, Chrissy and co for a few games in a row, will we really have a few games spare to wait?

Well . . . yes, given our target is not to fall flat on our backside this season. But still, The Man thinks we’re making life harder than needs be.

• The Man has neither the time nor inclination to work out the last time we won a match when the players flew there. The game when Mark Robins scored a hat-trick at Oldham, maybe. Seriously guys, give it a rest. A comfortable journey clearly doesn’t sit well with actually winning.

• The chances any of us will get too excited by the big arrival of Burnley on Saturday is slim, let’s be honest.

But considering slating football clubs is so easy at the moment, The Man will concede they seem to have at least managed to be run reasonably well. Boro’ are going to be screwed, Pompey still are, while the likes of Hull, Cardiff and I****** seem to get away with nothing short of financial murder.

Mind you, the fact Alastair Campbell’s second favourite waste of time haven’t spent a penny on Turf Moor since 1950 has probably helped.

• The Man wonders, have we ever had such an . . . er . . . expressive director as Stephen Fry? Obviously our national treasure wasn’t a big fan of the job The Observer did on him on Sunday. I doubt that was quite the interweb coverage the City board was hoping for when they signed him up.

And now he’s apparently given up on his twitter thing, does he have to give his seat back?