The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Sucking lemons

24 May 2017

Wicklow Diary writes: Wanted for crimes against breakfast: the lass from our HR. I know how divisive eating and drinking subjects can be. Twitter nearly shut down during the great "which goes in the cup first, tea or the mil-" shhhh, I won't even mention it. Then of course there was the scown/scon pronunciation battle. I thought I'd seen it all last month when I winced at the sight of beans served with a jumbo haddock at Steel's. Today might take the figurative biscuit. Scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and beans! The horror. Sally looked like such a normal person too.

If you've got the constitution to read on, is it really news that we've signed another midfielder? It's so routine these days that it's hardly worth wasting any more zeros and ones. Mitchell Rose seems like a nice bloke and we welcome him to the club. Dale stuck to his script and asked how the move came about, what he knows about the club, what type of player (repeat for one thousand more signings). Perhaps the only titbit of note is that GTFC's location at the end of the A180 worked in our favour on this occasion. Or Mitch's favour. Rose is from last exit before the end of the world, or Donny as the locals call it.

Also, once again we've signed a player with a Premier League brother. Well, Tombola's brother in 'Ull isn't PL any more, but he was when Tom signed. Town are quite literally football's poor relations.

Sometimes football can bore the arse off you. An infinite number of decisions and actions across every day, extending to every club, manager, player and fan. So how can such an immeasurable number of scenarios be so dull and predictable? Close season is normally bad enough. I can just about tolerate the "oh no, we've been saddled with rubbish by the previous manager" routine every few years. Not at the current frequency though.

A bad workman blames his tools. A bad manager just blames the previous guy's tools. The manager says I've inherited a squad load of old tosh or, even worse, I need to bring in players with technical ability and the club agrees. They've got to back their man, haven't they. We all try to forget that they're the same board who backed the previous guy. And the guy before that. It's harder to forget when it happens every few months. Those fans that back our board through thin and thinner, who tell me John Fenty works hard for the club and he's a fan, answer this: if you said the same about a player who couldn't kick snow off a rope, would you keep him on the team?

Slade should be ready to work with the squad that are here. Who is he going to get in anyway? They're going to be someone else's cast-offs; otherwise we could not afford them

Slade should be ready to work with the squad that are here. I mean who is he going to get in anyway? They're going to be someone else's cast-offs; otherwise we could not afford them.

On the face of it, Rose seems to back this up. I'd love to be able to enjoy the humour from the absurdity of signing another midfielder on another two-year deal from another side at the wrong end of Division Four. Remember (how can Craig Disley and Shaun Pearson forget) that we are told Slade's budget and dealings are hampered because Hursty got Berrett and Summerfield or Bignot signed Clements et al.

On the plus side, Rose is young and seems hungry. He was thrown into a losing battle at Newport and both he and his team survived.

Doing all this twice in six months – and Hurst also abandoning his rebuild before the concrete set in the foundations – really has given me the pip. B teams again, Russell Slade again, signings that make you go hmmmmm and fans saying in [name of manager] we trust. Even Dale's interview questions are striking the same chord. It's déjà vu all over again.

In Slade we trust would make me smile, but once again the joke has worn off. Martin Gritton's account of his transfer to Town in 2004 is an insight into the scouting that goes into the exhaustive search for a player. Slade rang an agent and asked for a striker. He was given a choice of two: a big one and a small one. Slade plumped for the big one, which happened to be Gritts. Job's a good 'un.
A particular favourite of Mardy Diary's is the story of Slade signing Steve Mildenhall because "he could kick the ball a long way".

Now these tales are twelve years old and have probably grown legs in the retelling. I hope more thought than that goes into blowing spending our cash. However, bear in mind that managers seem to have relationships with favoured agents and that's where you end up placing your trust. For Hursty it tended to be in LPM Agents we trust. In Marcus and now Russ it seems to be in Fifteen Eleven we trust. Contacts, innit. All good meta-football managers have them.

Add to all this the fact that we don't even know how long the current rebuilder is here for. The curt manner in which John Fenty handled the contract length question at Slade's unveiling meant it is either so short it would startle the paying customers or so long it would startle the paying customers. Of course, it may just be a sensible Hurst- or Bignot-style roller – but if so, why didn't he just tell us?

I think we're still making it up as we go. Again. Do you think we are a well-run, well-oiled machine with a vision and a plan? And by plan I mean more than a hope that enabling developments will save the club. Just saying, cos if we don't have a plan, we might be spitting out dust from teams like Lincoln as they zoom past. Call them bandwagoners if you want but they'll have probably sold four thousand season tickets before we've sold one by the time we ours go on sale in June.

By the way, what's wrong with bandwagoners? If we don't get a few of our own, how will we ever get 14,000 to fill Skate Park 2: Beyond the Fentydome?

During close season there is no escape from these thoughts. We need the football to distract us. On that note, another pre-season fixture has been announced. Freshly relegated Blackburn will visit BP on 25 July. That's assuming there's a still BP or even a Cleethorpes after Barnsley's visit on the 15th. Have we told Humberside Police yet that we're having another Saturday friendly with a Yorkshire side during the holidays?

Inviting Blackburn round for tea suggests that John Fenty might regard the Venkys in the same way he views the Oyston and Allam families: wronged and misunderstood by tens of thousands of fans who just don't get it. Us saps.

It does seem a bit odd having the trust pay for BP when the main event was the Operation Promotion celebrity match. So we paid the club for the right to raise money for the club

Let's lighten the mood. Anyone remember Mighty Mouse in Roy of the Rovers? His team played Alfreton Hotcakes in the cup one year. It was my all-time favourite Roy of the Rovers team name apart from Grimthorpes Town. Anyone? No? As you were.

Yes, well Macca has been announced as Alfreton manager. The real Alfreton. Is it wrong to hope he does well but not well enough to come back to GTFC as boss? Or does so well that he bypasses us altogether and gets a TOP job at a BIG club? It hurt seeing Paul Groves called a prat: it might be too much to see Macca get similar abuse.

The trust did its thing on Sunday by providing a fine community day out at BP. Three full matches along with juniors got to play at BP. The club did its thing too – by, er, charging the trust for the use of the pitch. I'm sure there are operational and staffing costs that have to be covered, but it does seem a bit odd having the trust pay for BP when the main event was the Operation Promotion celebrity match. So we paid the club for the right to raise money for the club. Dizza, don't forget to bring your wallet to your testimonial, not to fill it but to pay for the pitch and floodlights.

The celebrity game saw Danny North back scoring at Blundell Park and on Monday he signed for Clee Town. Welcome back home, Danny, although I'm not sure if the move will finally finish the talk of you ever returning to Blundell Park or just help to fuel it.

What other doings are transpiring? Pompey, having got their club back have promptly decided to get shot of it. Their trust has sold out to another billionaire. He is different from the others they've had though. This one PROMISES not to screw them over to the brink of extinction like the previous few. If it wasn't for the actual football, I'd hate football. Why have Pompey taken this course of action? They say they want to be competitive. We all know it's because they've stiff necks from looking up at Southampton and Bournemouth and fear they'll never catch up. You can't beat them, so join them is the attitude.

It's an uneven playing field and vast sums of outside money obliterate a more organic approach. The competition organisers have failed to ensure a level playing field and as a result, real football is finished. Gone, done for. The ultimate reward for shrewd, astute management on and off the pitch is a thing of the past. Town and dozens more will never reach the top of the pyramid without some spiv with a ton of cash and a bigger ego.

Pompey have faced into that future and made their choice.