Cod Almighty | Diary

Antsy in the Pantsy

26 September 2025

Brentford are not the bad news this week. The bad news this week is that Cam Gardner is out until at least the New Year and possibly four months. The young forward seems to be stuck in a one step forward, two steps back cycle of joy and despair. Your A46 Diary wishes him nothing but the best and hopes that the rehabilitation is filled with Haribos and ice cream and Lucozade and all things lovely and sweet. Come back stronger, blow them away and warm BP in the deepest depths of winter.

Artell was on form in his pre-match interview yesterday, happily anticipating the Brentford game, lauding the London club’s operations and meteoric rise and downplaying our chances while encouraging the fans to be excited. More exciting in the immediate is the news that pretty much everyone is back in training, running on grass and re-acclimatising to the ‘pitch geography’. Of all the new terms we hear from our vintage-faced-but-modern-attituded head coach that one makes a lot of sense. Pitch geography. I like it. Certainly, it’s more likeable than DA’s introduction of voices to imitate fans’ impatience with the idea that professional sportsmen can be tired. Say it, don’t ape it, Dave.

Some of you may be aware that I write a weekly piece for the View from the Findus folk called View from the Weekend that has a weekly Vernam watch. Lots of material for that this week as CV has been pushed in front of the cameras to be reminded of his injuries, his lack of consistency, his general lack of achieving that potential, his recent efforts to remind all that he is at the same time our most entertaining, effective and frustrating player. A new addition is to point out he is now one of the senior players. Where does the time go? Into Charles’s thigh treatments, I suppose.

Brentford really isn’t bad news. A Premier League side at home, a side with very poor FA Cup form in recent years, a side who will be prioritising finishing 13th instead of 14th, obsessing over every elite point as so much more important than piffling prizes like progression in domestic trophies. Yes, they’ve had two League Cup quarter finals in the last five years, but that just means they’re due a Round 4 exit. Or something like that. It's not a bad draw, okay, not a bad draw at all. Not saying we’ll win or even that it feels winnable, but it’s not a bad draw. Looking forward to it. A lot.

I went over not wanting to live on bread and butter a few weeks ago when moaning about moaners who moan that cup runs are the devil’s dirty underpants and the source of all League woes. We've only won one game since we beat Man U. We’re too tired to play twice a week (oof, Dave’s ‘voice’ echoes on that one!). We're a shadow of that team that exploded onto the scene. Wish we hadn’t beaten Man U. Get us out of this cup; it’s killing us. Free Willy! That's a whale and nothing to do with the cup except that the way some talk, you’d think a cup run meant the extinction of spirit animals and the end of humanity’s connection with anything sacred in this world.

Or we just want to find excuses for a mini run of poor form.

It is a mini run, and it’s come in the games after we exploded onto the scene and then teams have worked us out. Time to change it up, not time to lose our toilets. Five points in the last five is certainly disappointing compared with the ten points from the previous four but we’ll come good again, win games again, get all those touches in the opposition box again. Maybe we’re only four games from another ten-point haul, maybe we’re five games from another five-point catch. It’s all ‘maybe’ right now, and our dissatisfaction with recent performances are only proof that we should, will and can expect more. This a team that has stirred something within us all, and we’re unsettled, impatient, restless. The word is antsy. A great word, an abstract onomatopoeia, a marching of tiny feet up our spines, invigorating in its mischief.

Cheltenham tomorrow. They've sacked their manager after an awful start, have only one away point, are in desperate need of goals and points – they've only scored three and already have a GD of –14! - and they have Harry Pell. I made a tongue-in-cheek prediction before the home game against Cambridge about us heading into an inevitable 0-1 and was almost proved right in a depressing afternoon. Tomorrow can’t be as bad. Can it? I'm antsy.