Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Wednesday 21 September 2011
21 September 2011
Town won last night 16-1. Cynics will say it takes a lot more than sixteen corners before Grimsby will score from one but, hey, it's an increasing number. We've started winning home games and we are no longer top of the relegation zone, but merely bottom of the mid-table obscurity division. 16th and climbing.
The managers asked to be judged after ten league games and all I can say is that we are a bit better than we were five games ago when we were the worst we have ever been. But only the hugest of dyed-in-the-wool Town optimists would predict a charge up to the play-offs. Last night we beat Kettering 2-1 at home after going a goal down. Kettering looked to me just like Grimsby - a mid-table conference team. But the luck has turned (no, not the tide - don't get excited Mr Fenty) a little bit: the late defensive howler which saw Kempson all over the place and the goalkeeper wandering about in no mans land went unpunished for once.
Last night Town applied enormous pressure but didn't impress in the danger areas. Elding scored (hurrah!). Elding missed with a horrible header that no experienced striker should have bungled so badly. In the last quarter, with Eagle restored to the left and Coulson introduced on the right we were much more dangerous. The Makofo magic was easy to stunt - teams just double up on him and although he is fleetish of foot and as strong as a bull his mind works too slowly to exploit attacking opportunities.
But before a ball was kicked we got the Parker rebuttal. The camps seem divided: the Grimsby Fentygraph and Radio Parkerside. Now don't get your Guest Diarist wrong, gentle reader, I don't trust Mike Parker an inch. But his quite lengthy interview with Matt Dean addressed a lot of issues head on, and, crucially, Mr Parker adopted a clear fact-based approach.
He proceeded to remind us he is on record more than once as saying he doesn't have either the ambition or the time to be chairman of the club. Now he has to go and look for a Chairman to represent his and the clubs interests. He explained that, as publicly promised, he and Fenty had each put a £500,000 cash injection in to fund the club budget to the end of this season. Parker had invested his monies in by buying shares to strengthen the clubs balance sheet (and to avoid the criticisms levelled at Fenty about 'benign debt' I assume). Fenty had surprised Parker by loaning the club his share of the million quid needed to support the loss-making business through one more season. This created the situation where Parker owned a much bigger percentage of the club then Fenty.
Parker confirmed that his extra shares had only been purchased with full board consent and that the transaction had occurred at the beginning of July 2011. Cue even more surprise he said at reading that Fenty seemed astonished at the turn of events. Parker then delivered the killer punch: he has no intention of investing in the club further after this season. He says he never promised to and his intentions have always been clear. Parker dodged all questions about the takeover panel inquiry as you'd expect.
The only questions missing from a good interview by Radio Humberside were to do with why Parker allowed the massively over-spending budget to be agreed in the first place. If he was putting in a total of £1.25m in to the club over a couple of years you'd think he would want it to be used to improve the business. As it stands it feels to me like a 'rich fans conscience payment'. Throwing good money after bad. To allow him to shrug to friends and say 'well I did what I could but it was hopeless'. But there we are: at least he's made it clear and we know where we stand. Unless the Parker game is longer: but he didn't do a Gandalf and say 'look to the east at daybreak on bankruptcy morning'. So I guess we have to take him at face value.
Fenty had promised to appear on Humberside after the match. But he bottled it. This man needs therapy. If he is already getting it he's not paying enough. Or not listening. But after Parker has spoken we need to hear from him urgently: Parker mused that Fenty had not made his future intentions regarding financial support of the club clear at all to him, going on to mutter darkly about the need for cutting coats according to the cloth in the future. To be honest Mr Parker, that's what I had expected you to do almost immediately upon your arrival in the Town board room.
In other news Fenty has been pointlessly pandering to the local rag by coyly revealing the decision-making process behind the appointment of Neil Woods rather than the re-hire of Russell Slade. Read it if you want, but basically it boiled down to money, however Fenty has dressed the story up. So what happened to 'not living in the past' Mr Fenty? Oh, and Green played well again and wants to sign a contract. Quite who will authorise that is anyone's guess but given Ridley is fit again it would be totally profligate to take on another wage. Surely?
So there we were after the match last night: left on a cliff-hanger in the latest tragic episode of the Grimsby soap opera. The win was a hollow one, meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Mike has said there's no more money from him. What will stubborn, dim John do now? See yer.