Cod Almighty | Diary

Maybe I'm Amazed

24 October 2025

With a week to go till Halloween, it seems Grimsby Town and Jaze Kabia are still haunting Gillingham fans. After receiving the good news that Hutton's red card was never really a red card they barely paused for celebratory breath before turning on the Mariners' number 9 and calling for an exorcism of club and player's possession of League Two referees.

Now, this is very interesting and not something we've experienced before. The frontrunners are there to be shot at. Town are a frontrunner in a proper professional Football League division for the first time in this now very-old-but-still-much-younger-than-our-last-time-as-a-frontrunner social media age. There are plenty of louder folk from popular teams wanting to have a pop at us. Your A46 Diary is giddy. Again.

And not just the critics and the paranoids. The numbers of commentators are growing as those who want our clicks are forced to pay closer attention to Artell's men. It began in the summer with most not having us in a relegation dog fight and a few even tipping us for promotion. Some even made the ridiculous statement of Town for the top three and I placed my first ever bets on Town, one backing them for promotion and another for the title. The curries are on me next summer!

Dreaming of wads of curry cash aside, it's not all sunshine and fully fit Danny Roses. We may have the highest xG in the division and in Vernam the best assister-scorer in the Football League, but the reasonably cynical Town fan in me says that that just means we've missed the most chances. Last Saturday was a typical case in point. How am I going to win a summer's supply of Royal Jalfrezi at the Agrah if Green and Rose shoot like that with the game still in the balance? Yes, we're the division’s second highest scorers with 25 in 15 but take out the seven against Cheltenham and it's a much less impressive 18 in 14. That makes that top xG stat look even more like damning with faint praise and confirming that it's actually a top-misser stat.

I'd like to see more minutes for Rose and Svanthorsson. I want Kabia to stay further forward and not get sucked into the midfield battle as much. I want to see us stretching the opposition more and using the space between the lines. Do I want to see Rogers dropped? That first touch of his is a liability at times. I know McEachran covers for him but it does mean that our most able central footballer and the right winger are forced to play deeper. If I'm to maintain my giddiness I want to see us taking more advantage of the terror Vernam causes on the opposition right and our right having more space as a result. Could Svanthorsson play there? Imagine him taking up the positions that Rogers does...

Crewe tomorrow and Artell is full of praise for his former club. I like Crewe. They feel like such a familiar fixture. All those non-league years meant missing out on building up all those head-to-head stats with clubs like Crewe. The fixture is as old as the hills and we've had a pretty even record against them, so it's a weekend without hoodoos and bogeys. We've got their ex-manager and they've got Bogle, so they should cancel each other out on the bogey-ometer. We haven't beaten them for a while now, the calendar leafing over to 20 months since the 3-0 win at their place in April 2024. So, it's our turn then, yeah?

We take a big following, a big squad that's ever closer to full strength, big questions over centre-half, winger and midfield choices and big hopes for another three points: the early front runners in what's shaping up to be a season of being shot at. Fingers crossed we can keep haunting the opposition and the xG can be converted into G.

A word on Brentford. In what may be the giddiest of recent giddy seasons this is another night to savour. They'll be bigger, stronger and faster than us, better able to pull out a key pass, make a powerful run and slam home a chance. But they've not been here for a while and few, if any, of their staff and players will have ever been here. The clocks will have gone back, it'll be dark but bright under the lights, a glaring block of white illumination in the black North East Lincs sky.

Maybe it'll be Jordan Henderson getting his boots on in the corridor. Maybe it'll be a team of Luca Barringtons given the chance to impress and then culture-shocked by Blundell Park. Maybe it'll be Soonsup-Bell's time to shine. It's going to be a night of maybes and I'll be giddy again.