Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 9 October 2008

9 October 2008

It didn't sound from the press conference like Mike Newell would be bringing in a load of players straight away, and so it comes as little surprise today to hear the new Town manager offering a clean slate to his existing squad of underperformers. "It would only be fair to assess what we have got at the club so far and give them a chance, and give the lads who are not in the team a chance, or certainly have a look at them before I decide what I need and what we need to bring into the club," are the words Newell chooses to downplay any expectations of a quick supermarket sweep around the transfer market. In fairness, this is the right thing to do after the failure of Disco Stu Watkiss's three loan signings to improve Town's horrible run of league results, though it can also be seen as a vindication of Alan Buckley's squad-building. A fully fit back four including Richard Hope and Robbie Stockdale alongside Matt Heywood and Tom Newey may yet prove formidable; lest we forget, this was the defence that kept two clean sheets in the first two games of the season, and it was rotten luck for Buckley that he never had another chance to field it.

"You attributed the words 'verbally unspectacular' to Nigel Adkins in Tuesday's Diary," begins an email from Richard Lord. "Bloody hell, you weren't wrong. When we got back into the car we put Radio Humberside on as we sat through that bastard traffic jam out of the ground. All I can say is that I'm glad we were in that jam because we weren't let down by the repetitive dross that spewed out of Adkins' mouth. He seems a nice chap, fair in his assessments and all that, but his five-minute interview consisted of three things: (1) 'Credit to Grimsby, they've come here and given us a game', (2) 'Our objective was to win the game and we've done that', (3) 'I said before the game that their new manager will have an effect on their performance'. It was like being stuck in a time warp. His insistence on saying those three sentences seventeen times, one after another, had us in creases. He was so boring it was laughable!" At least he didn't start on the middle-management corporate toss this time though, Richard. You'd have been crying instead of laughing if he'd started on about the forward objective of achieving excellence together.

Hang on. A traffic jam? After a match at an out-of-town stadium? Surely not!