Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 19 January 2004

19 January 2004

Details have begun to emerge about the transfer of Alan Pouton to Gillingham. Town's popular but frankly overrated midfielder signed for the Gills before Saturday's visit to Port Vale on a three-and-a-half-year contract for a fee reported by the Grimsby Telegraph to be in the region of £50,000 but declared by the Kent club itself to be £30,000. The messageboards are probably going blue in the virtual face, but there was clearly no way Pouts was going to sign a new contract on what Town can afford to pay him, so the Diary advises readers to do their cardiovascular muscles a favour and just accept it. "Special credit must go to club secretary Gwen Poynter for her work in the deal," says Gills chairman Paul Scally, mysteriously.

Mr Paul Groves refuses to blame his side's latest thrashing on the departure of Pouton - which appears to have been revealed to him at the eleventh hour, 59th minute and 59.999th second - and instead pays tribute to the quality of Vale's goals, which appear to have given Saturday's scoreline a flattering gloss as far as the home side were concerned. If optimism has deserted the supporters then it remains, for the moment, with the manager, who tells today's Grimsby Telegraph: "We can take heart from the performance against Plymouth, a bit more from what happened in the second half and a bit of luck on the way and hopefully we can try and turn things around." The Diary will be writing to GTFC today to request a quantity of the same medication being administered to Paul; in fact, if they sold it in the club shop they could make enough money to keep hold of Michael Boulding.

An email has arrived safely in the Diary's inbox stating simply: "Probably already heard it bandied about, I'll reveal all, Nigel Clough." This is not, lest you suspect, the promise of a striptease from the manager of Burton Albion but speculation by Diary reader Martin Deans as to a potential replacement for Grovesie, notwithstanding the stellar brilliance of four of those pesky Valiant goals. I have to say I don't believe you for 0.0001 of a second, Martin, but thanks for sharing, fella. Readers are invited to send any further thoughts about Paul's management, or messageboard postings about his possible replacement, to codalmightydiary@yahoo.co.uk.