Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 25 September 2008
25 September 2008
Tomi Ameobi is a 20-year-old striker who joined Doncaster Rovers from Leeds United during the last close season. He made ten substitute appearances for Scunthorpe United on loan last season, scoring no goals - the only senior outings of his career so far, bar a couple of run-outs in the cups for Leeds. His big brother plays up front for Newcastle and occasionally scores a goal. Malvin Kamara is a London-born Sierra Leone international currently with Huddersfield Town, whom he joined in June 2007 after spells with Port Vale, Cardiff City, Bastard Franchise Scum and Wimbledon. A 24-year-old winger, he has scored 13 goals, having started 97 games and made a further 77 appearances as a substitute. Both players are training with the Mariners and are set to sign one-month loan deals with the club today, bringing to three the number of short-term signings made by the club since the sacking last week of Alan Buckley.
Michael Harrison, for one, is convinced that all these new signings mean only one thing. "Mr Fenty is really, really good at keeping his cards close to his Tory blue vest," begins his email to the Diary, "but his comments on the applications and interviews say more than mere words. Clearly, the Hon. John has decided to let young Watkiss have a go. Otherwise our Blessed Leader would not be splashing the cash on loanees all over the fish shop, would he? Fairly easy game on Saturday, any sort of result will allow the Mighty One to prevaricate further about a spanking new manager. We will see a statement saying that the applications have been considered... shortlisting next week... interviews the week after... in the meantime hoping that the stand in will gather a few more points and oops there you go... cheapest option but no room for the doubters to argue with a few points in the bag. Unless of course, Barnet could do us all a favour."
Right, well, for one thing, these are loan players, so if a new manager comes in and doesn't want them, he can just send them back at minimal expense. For a second, both Fenty and Buckley had acknowledged all along that the money was there to bring in more players, but it was just a question of Buckley finding the ones he deemed right for his team and, for better or for worse, he was clearly far more particular in this regard than your average manager. For another thing, can anyone give a grounding in fact to this cliché about Watkiss being a "cheap option"? Do you really think he'd be promoted from assistant manager to manager without getting a pay rise? Or have you just heard other people saying it and you want to fit in? For a fourth, even if Disco Stu is a cheap option, there's no money coming in because no bastard is going to Blundell Park to watch the team, so you couldn't really blame Fenty if he were trying to save a few bob. And finally, how is everyone so sure that Watkiss would be no good? What is this knowledge based on? Shouldn't we just see what happens before we moan about it? If we use up all our moan energy on Watkiss being rubbish, and then he doesn't get the job, or he gets the job and turns out to be alright, we won't have any energy left to moan about the manager who does get the job or about Watkiss playing too direct a style, or not direct enough a style, or whatever. Think about what you're doing!
So what is happening about the manager's job? Well, when David 'What Would You Say To Us?' Burnsy mentioned his name on the radio last week the Diary smiled in professional admiration at the broadcaster's ability to get a rise out of his fellow Town fans. Today, however, corpulent East Yorkshireman Dean Windass has been linked with the managerial vacancy at Blundell Park by no less a source than the Mirror - a newspaper renowned for its 100 per cent accuracy in all its prognostications of football transfers and managerial appointments. "Dean Windass could be in line for a shock move to Grimsby as player-manager. The [King$ton Communication$ FC] striker has been targeted by the League Two club and is wanted to replace Alan Buckley following his sacking last week," reports the Mirror, in no way registering the player's discontent at being left out of the KCFC team, putting two and two together and coming up with a five-legged alabaster elephant on stilts.
"If we're asking rhetorical political questions," begins an email from Mark Wilson in response to yesterday's Diary, "could someone please explain to me how George Bush, a disciple of Milton Freedman-led Chicago School of Economics-style unfettered free market economics, can justify massive government intervention to prop up a banking system caving in under the pressure of rampant profit making by a small clique of robber barons?" The Diary couldn't have put it better myself, Mark, and when a man like Bush can be called a communist you know that the cracks are starting to appear in capitalism. Not every reader, I am certain, is likely to share the Diary's hardline socialist views, but if hundreds of millions of workers worldwide are left destitute after the collapse of the global economic system brought about by the structural contradictions within capitalism, then surely we can all agree that it would at least be a good laugh if the Premier League goes bankrupt as well.
Lastly today, David Parrott asks: "How about Alan Buckley? He has a decent record at our level and likes to play attractive, passing football." I can only assume he's talking about the Newcastle job.