Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Friday 3 February 2006
3 February 2006
Well, gentle reader, we have just about reached the end of another week. A period in which there has been, frankly, almost too much news for your Guest Diarist's enfeebled brain to process. So which of our new signings are callipygous, ladies? And whom of the new signings is likely to don the crapulous mantle bequeathed by our old friend Mr Gallimore? What now is the point of JPK Kamudimbaa? And, on an allied theme, isn't Town's first-team squad size now numerically equivalent to Chelsea's? Mr Russell Slade has been burning the candle at both ends, it would seem, in an effort to shake up and augment his squad - and Mr Fenty has, in the cavalier spirit of fiscal intemperance, let him. Incidentally, has anyone ever actually seen a candle burning at both ends? Pete Green has written an admirable article for the Grimsby Telegraph about Slade's panic shopping. Read it, folks, when you get a minute.
Bristol City manager Gary Johnson was interviewed by Radio Bristol yesterday and confirmed that he has not given up on signing diffident Town striker Michael Reddy. Johnson is reported as saying: "The Grimsby board would have taken a bit of stick had they sold him when they were going for promotion. They can afford to keep him a little longer so I wasn't that surprised." One would assume that Town's creditors will splutter, to put it mildly, when hearing that Town turned down a bid of the order of £300,000 for one of their assets. I think it would have been a great piece of business. Let's hope that Mr Fenty's poker skills are better than mine and we get another £100k for him at the end of the season. I'll tell you a story which illustrates why I believe in that old bird-in-the-hand malarkey. Your Guest Diarist, with some mates, once bought a cheap racehorse - an animal called Say You. We paid five grand for it, and three months later it unexpectedly won a small handicap at Brighton. The phone rang and a bloodstock agent offered us 10,000 guineas for it. The trainer convinced us that this was just the start of great things and we kept it. Seven months later it made 800 quid at the Doncaster sales after a mystery back injury ended its racing ambitions. Enough said?
It can now be exclusively revealed here that young Mr Glen Downey spent the entire transfer window hiding in a cupboard under the Main Stand living on scraps surreptitiously delivered to him by David Smith. He emerged blinking, as the 'window' closed, to discover that not only was he still a Town player but moreover had risen a tad in the pecking order of the Town defence. Smith had discovered him lurking, by accident, when taking a Look North reporter in to the bowels of the Main Stand, after having been charged by the club with the solemn duty of proving to the viewing public that the stand is of timber construction. He tapped a joist and looked serious. It set me thinking that maybe the whole of Blundell Park should be declared a listed building and preserved for ever as a monument to the golden age of provincial football.
The Grimsby Telegraph has had a word with Mr Slade and extrapolated a likely line-up for tomorrow's match at Notts County. Apparently Mr Slade is keen to start with young Goodfellow wide on the left, with Parky retaining his place on the other flank. This means either Mendes or Cohen will start in the support role to Michael Reddy, as Gary Jones' swollen toe has turned out to be a swollen, broken toe. The so far disappointing Futcher junior will return to find that his right-back partner will be Gary Croft. This has occurred because Sir John of McDermott has discovered that dancing when middle-aged can often bring on a nasty attack of sciatica. Speaking of ailments that used to worry your Mum and Dad, what about chilblains? Thanks to global warming, I suppose, these itchy red sores, darkly predicted in those wintry sixties days of my childhood sledging era, seem to have vanished. Then we had chilblains to worry about; now we have HIV and smack to scare our kids with. See yer.