Cod Almighty | Article

by Pat Bell

23 December 2020

Ian Holloway has chosen the very worst moment to dump us. Both he and the man who appointed him - John Fenty - deserve contempt

I am not going to put too fine a point on it: I am angry. Angry and more than a little scared for the immediate future of the Mariners. Ian Holloway has dumped us at the worst possible moment, in the middle of a mess which is partly of his own creating.

Holloway's excuse for leaving is wafer thin. Impossible not to reach a much simpler conclusion: he wants out, and now has jumped the very ship he has helped steer onto the rocks

We have no manager, and no assistant manager so caretaker dutes will presumably fall on Ben Davies, Dave Moore, or, may heaven preserve him from the overwhelming sense of a fateful deja vu, Neil Woods. We do not have a board in any credible position to appoint a new manager, nor to make the decisions that are needed about our playing squad in January. Because to top everything, we have a group of players which is patently not up to Football League standard. It could be, maybe, one day, except the coaching that is needed to transform it just isn't going to happen in this crammed-in season with our meagre coaching staff.

Holloway's excuse for leaving - that potential investors have been making inappropriate contact with him - is wafer thin. Impossible not to reach a much simpler conclusion, borne out by his behaviour over the last week: he wants out, and now has jumped the very ship he has helped steer onto the rocks. He doesn't deserve to work in football again. He doesn't deserve to be invited on television to air his colourful opinions again, not unless he does it clutching a white feather.

The bigger picture is of course that John Fenty has to take the blame. Appointing Holloway, not only as manager but to the board, was his last throw of the dice after both Paul Hurst and Michael Jolley had exposed the limitations which are placed on the manager of Grimsby Town. We may never know how much of the vision Fenty shared with Holloway was founded on the talks he had apparently already started with the convicted fraudster Alex May.

Both Holloway and Fenty now deserve the contempt of every supporter of Grimsby Town. They have put the club in such a mess that avoiding a return to non-League will be difficult: if we do go down, they - not the people who replace them - must take the blame.

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