Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 13 May 2009

13 May 2009

Agents - you can't live with them, you can't live with them. That's the gut instinct of most football fans - and the agents, it has to be said, do very little to disabuse them of this notion. What has all this to do with our beloved Mariners? Peterborough United's director of football Barry Fry has been asking John Fenty (Con) about the contractual situation of player of the season Ryan Bennett, having apparently been told by several agents that the Town captain was available for transfer. As any fool knows - except, it would seem, the agents - Bennett is contracted to GTFC for another two years under an option in his existing contract, so Town's chairman explained to Mr Fry that the player was not, in fact, available for transfer. What happened next? "Barry then said, well that's alright John, if that's the situation then so bit it." Ouch! Oh, and then Barry told Radio Humberside all about it; the Grimsby messageboards cranked out the 'how much money should Town accept for Bennett when the offers start?' threads for the 914th time in the last two years; and agents looking for new business continued to approach clubs and offer players who aren't even on the agents' books, so that they could then go to the players and say "hey, kid, sign up with us and we'll get you that move to Peterborough that you've always dreamed of". Someone remind me again why we support football.

Scared shitless that Town's dwindling band of season ticket holders will see their arse about the recent big discounts offered to fans who pick and choose their games, the club has announced that season ticket prices will stay the same as last year - and emphasised that those fiver/tenner tickets of recent weeks are an offer not to be repeated. Incidentally, speaking of season tickets, if any Diary reader knows of a senior English club that puts its season tickets on sale later than the Mariners, I would love to hear about it. Readers who live outside Grimsby - when in the year do your local Football League or Premier League clubs start selling their season tickets? Email diary@codalmighty.com and tell us.

Elsewhere in the world of Grimsby - the Grimsby Telegraph, to be precise - John Fenty (Con) claims that he could tell as early as last pre-season that the signs weren't good for the campaign coming up. "The new additions weren't going to fit in as Alan Buckley had hoped and soon into the season it was clear our biggest fears were coming to the forefront," says the chairman, trying to use the phrase 'coming to the fore' and getting it slightly wrong. "That's not because Alan wasn't a good manager because nobody can argue he's an excellent manager," he continues, this time saying the exact opposite of what he wants to say, which is 'nobody can argue that he's not an excellent manager' or 'nobody can argue against the notion that he's an excellent manager'. The real thing is, though, that JF(C) kept telling us at the time that everything was fine, and continued to insist that Lord Buckley was the right dude for the gig until approximately 3.7 seconds before sacking him. I know a chairman can't really come out and say: "Shit! We're completely buggered!" without fatally undermining his manager, but it sort of begs the question, when Tory John pronounces on footballing matters, of whether we can really set any storefront by it.