Cod Almighty | Diary

Try to kill it all away - but I remember everything

18 April 2024

Good morning Gentle Reader, your Guest Diarist is here to tell you that it is time to leave past failures behind and to embark on new failures. The season isn't over but our place in the bottom four is secure. Staying up or going down won't change the fact that this season has been a failure. And the first goal we conceded at Colchester epitomised it. Lose the ball, centre of the park wide open, they run through and score virtually unchallenged. You could see it coming from the half way line - I found myself humming an old nursery rhyme; "the runaway train came down the track and she blew". It is OK, I am back on my medication now.

Town will let you down; Town will make you hurt. Relegation by goal difference, once a pesky little asteroid a million miles away, now appears as a big nasty lump of rock heading our way. The situation is not out of control but that thing we tried on Tuesday didn't work and now bums have started to squeak. My mind drifts back to when we got relegated in similar fashion before (I was eight at the time). By a worse goal average of 0.045. Goal average, for younger readers was the stupid forerunner to goal difference. You divided goals scored by goals against I think. Anyhow it introduced a curious eight-year-old to long division, decimals and heartbreak.

Of course the season has not been all bad. We will always have Salford. And Crewe. Danny Rose. Jewelery in the junk shop of life.

In the old days shouty fans used to dismiss managers out of hand because "they don't have enough contacts!" The little black book was empty. So we replaced them with a bloke who knew where to ring for a full-back who was not too dear. Now, now players are signed by algorithm. Are we doing any better? You be the judge.

Usually, when circling the drain, the club is shouting for us to be the twelfth man and ordering us to pack the park, etc. But the park has been pretty much packed all season, and the fans have been singing home and away. We won't go down, it is just a mild case of hangover paranoia isn't it? Just a nagging little doubt that won't go away. But if we get that point, don't celebrate gentle reader, we deserve better than this sort of season again.

I need comfort food. A slow pot-roasted shoulder of lamb timed to eat at 5pm Saturday should do it. Gotta go to the butchers. See yer.