The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

It's nearly over

18 April 2016

Another game and another grinding, defensive performance but at least we have another point towards consolidating our position in the playoffs. At the beginning of the season if we’d been offered the play-offs with any three of Forest Green, Dover, Braintree or Eastleigh then I think we’d have taken it. Once we’d got over the shock of not strolling it as champions of course, but that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. We always seem to want to do it the hard way, don’t we?

As was pointed out by the always excellent @TooGoodToGoDown on Twitter, not long after the match: it has to be our year; we won’t get a better chance than this.

Are any of those teams really anything to be too worried about over two legs? Put aside the doom and gloom which has overtaken us and ignore our sluggish performances. If we play to our strengths we should beat any of them, surely? It’s a big ‘if’ of course but we are a better team than any of them. There’s certainly not a Bristol Rovers amongst them.

As well as potentially favourable opponents, the other reason it has to be our time is that next year the newly relegated teams will get a bit of a financial leg-up from the league in the form of a parachute payment. Dagenham & Redbridge were relegated on Saturday but in John Still they have a manager with experience of getting sides out of the conference, including the Daggers. Like TGTGD says – it has to be our year.

Our former bogey team Wrexham are out of the running but at the weekend they kindly put a sizeable dent in Tranmere’s chances of sneaking into the top five. They haven’t been much cop all year but there’s something about the almost-scousers which worries me. It would be just our luck for them to realise their potential in the playoffs so with a bit of luck our final day game against them will be a dead rubber. I'm glad Lincoln didn't make it too; could you imagine facing the Imps at Wembley? I think we'd win but we'd have sleepless nights in the days before. It must never happen, for our sanity's sake.

Outside of Birkenhead the big talking point of the weekend was of course Paul Hurst’s omission of 30+ goal talisman Pádraig Amond. He wasn’t injured so it’s difficult for us to understand why he didn’t start and it’s harder still to understand why he didn’t join the action later in the game, especially if Pittman was looking a tad on the heavy side. Come to think of it, considering our injuries, anyone vaguely striker-ish should have had a run out on Saturday.

The gaffer mumbled summat about Podge "not suiting us system" as we set up to counter Dover’s direct but effective style but that just seems stark, raving bonkers. I'm not a football manager but there must be something in our system and Podge’s playing style that works, surely? I mean, he’s looked okay over the course of the season hasn’t he? 

One theory floated was that Hurst was keeping his cards close to his chest; not playing his best team or usual formation so that if we end up facing Dover in the play-offs then they won’t know what hit ‘em. Really? Nah. I love a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone but if the club wanted to play secret-squirrel then they’d have to ask all of us to not tweet our best team and formation. It’s in the public domain and everyone knows it’s 4-4-2 with red socks and Podge partnered by Bogle. The most confused parties at the weekend were us fans and maybe Podge and his teammates too. 

Maybe the real reason for ths tactical bodyswerve was that Hurst saw this as being a grim, joyless affair with few chances available and so Podge was rested ready for more open games against Woking on Tuesday and then Chester? Playing the margins? If that was the case and we went to the Crabble simply to stop an in-form Dover from getting three points then maybe it's better to simply come out and say that’s what our plan was. 

Whatever the reason though, it’s the sort of thing gives me the jitters. I’d much rather we always played our best team week in, week out unless injuries prevent it. Batshit crazy team selections and other forms of experimentation should be got out of the way as early as possible, ideally in pre-season or behind closed doors. But you know what? We’ll never know the real reason and we can’t do anything about it anyway. It’s in the past and we’re not picking the team anyway. We just have to get behind the team for the next few games and in less than a month we’ll know if it’s all been worth it.

By the way, has anybody worked out what Alan Alger’s thing is?