Cod Almighty | Diary

Breeze and bluster

10 February 2020

Trentside Diary writes: West Yorkshire Diary finished last week with some interesting stats on Town’s current form. Let’s start this week with one fabulous fact: Saturday saw 2,545 Town fans breeze into Bradford. The best away attendance in the fourth division. Sunday saw storm Ciara blustering across the country. We know which was more exciting, even considering all those trampolines blowing around.

Certainly, the second half of the match was end to end stuff, and then what can beat an injury-time goal? A fair result, even if we could have nicked it in the dying seconds. What is great to see is Town trying to play the passing game introduced by the new manager. For the players we already had, it will take time for them to be totally confident but they are getting there.

Charles Vernam has been a revelation. We had seen glimpses of what he could do before but now he’s on fire. It’s the manager and the players around him that have enabled this and long may it continue. It’s a sign of where we've been as a club, but it's been a while since we've had a memorable chant for a player, like a whole stand singing about our ginger Pirlo, Omar Bogle, or LJL ("His name is a shop". Vernam should be in the running for one of his own now, and while we’re at it maybe the club can offer him a new contract (but I said that last week.)

Anthony Glennon is some player too. Unfortunately, the likelihood of us having a cat in hell’s chance to hang on to a player of his class are close to zero but we can enjoy him while he's here. 

We have become accustomed to incompetent referees and Saturday was no exception but I would never want VAR introduced. We have been desperate for some atmosphere at Blundell Park: don’t kill celebrating a goal by spending four minutes checking it. I'm not sure Fenty would vote for it though. He’s not going to want to shell out the £9,251 every home game which is what clubs are charged per match. How ridiculous. How that can be justified over and above what clubs must already pay for the four officials at the ground? A completely unrealistic charge from football authorities, but would we expect anything else?

And finally, we have become accustomed to embarrassing fans. I'm sticking to "embarrassing", but I can think of a few more apt descriptions. After such a great turn-out there were a few idiots chanting "Tommy Robinson" as they walked past a mosque. Yes you really are such tough guys aren't you?

Were these the same idiots who threw the flares? Who knows, but that are still idiots. The smoke blowing around only affects our own fans, the club can be fined, and do you really think that celebration was missing something? You know it wasn't.

UTM. Fenty Out.