Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Monday 1 September 2008

1 September 2008

As the worldwide economy continues to slow down, Blundell Park was the scene of a mini credit crisis of its own on Friday after the breakdown of Javan Vidal's loan transfer to North East Lincs. For proceeding on the basis that Town's attempts to sign a right-back necessarily implied that Alan Buckley was not trying to sign a striker as well, the nesbits who spent the afternoon dribbling BOOOO BUKCLY MUPPIT TWON NEED STRYKAS OMG all over most of the worldwide web emerge with no credit. After training with the Mariners and then refusing to sign because his agent got wind of the move and sorted him out a loan to Stockport instead, Vidal himself emerges with no credit. For charging subscribers to their official text message service 25p to receive the news that Vidal had signed, when he had in fact done no such thing, Grimsby Town Football Club's shambolic communications department once again emerges with absolutely no credit at all. And if the unthinkable happens and the player chooses GTFC ahead of his local Hatters when he reveals his final decision today, the Diary's wafer-thin credibility will now follow most of the above into the debit column as well.

"It's official, Lord Buckley has gone stir crazy," wrote Paddy Grant in an email to the Diary on Friday morning, just before the Vidal thing unravelled. "I read with excitement that we'd signed a youngster from Man City, my heart sank when I read he plays right-back!!! There must be some secret plan here to crowd the pitch with defenders and pray that at some point the opposition keeper makes a mistake." Well, he's not coming now, so you can relax, because everything must be alright. Apart from the bit about we still don't have any strikers. Or any defenders, because most of them are either injured or Tom Newey. Still, at least we didn't sign a defender. Phew!

So did you get to Lincoln to see Newey revert to type? Were you impressed by the Mariners' temporary return to fluent passing football, or have you seen enough of these false dawns recently to have left confirmed in your gloom after the team's failure to put away an Imps side that was shockingly poor even by its own recent standards? I feel bad for writing this after Ian Plenderleith was so nice about us the other day, but what can you do. WE SCORED A GOAL! The feverish atmosphere back on the estuary after Town's breaking of their duck has not, so far, spread to the Grimsby Telegraph, however, which seems to have made a 4-1 defeat the default setting for Town this season and forgotten to change its template when reporting Saturday's outcome. But mentally, perhaps, we'd all of us done just the same thing already.

No messageboard rumour is too flimsy and ill-grounded for GTFC officials to dignify it with a response on the club's superb new official website, of course, and that's exactly what they've done in response to whisperings about Martin Butler's absence from the 16 on duty at Lincoln on Saturday: "but the player was at Sincil Bank and is training with the club today". So why wasn't he in the team? And what activity is there at BP as this infernal transfer deadline approaches? As no-shock no-horror headlines go, you'd be hard pressed to beat Teamtalk's Buckley Rules Out Panic Purchases, but please do contact the Diary immediately should you become aware of Buckley ruling in any panic purchases.