Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 14 November 2008

14 November 2008

Thought for the day: if the glass looks half empty, try tipping the contents into a smaller glass. Another Town match against unexpectedly play-off-positioned opposition tomorrow with a trip to seventh placed Bury. Your Guest Diarist has just dozed his morning through yet another slow, sonorous Mariners World interview with manager Newell where he rehearsed the self same points made in the last one. And the one before that.

You want to know what they are? Well, when you boil it down you are left with a nasty brown sludge in the bottom of that glass: a squad with too many unstable youngsters; a team whose spine is composed of players on short-term loan; a set of rules that only allow one more loanee (you can only play a maximum of five loan players in a game); a set of lads who have lost the belief they can actually win a game despite impressing in training; and a manager who is worried.

Despite the minor problems briefly mentioned above, the good news is that everyone you'd expect to be fit enough to be in contention to play, errm, is. Barnes had a bad arm but the "panic" has subsided and he trained on Thursday. Till's hamstring, which caused his early substitution in the last game, has prevented him training, but the Telegraph quotes Mr Newell as saying: "Tilly and Matty have both been back training so it's good we have a virtually a full squad available." Mr Re-Newell has made it plain that the starting line-up will be built around the four loan players plus Barnes. I don't think you can dispute that the four loanees are the best four players at the club right now; as for the other positions, it doesn't seem to matter greatly who fills them at the moment, to be brutally honest.

Embedded in the same Telewag article, by the way, is a video clip of Peter Bore talking to himself. Now I may have been previously guilty of taking the mickey out of this young man; if he had talked like this in the past I wouldn't have been so merciless about him. Let's hope his penny is dropping as he promises to work hard in training and do his best in the reserves.

Let's salute the stoic Town fans who will watch Town tomorrow, and pray for the fourth away goal of the season. Let's hope that the lads compete for every ball in the whole match and get lucky. Let's hope the balti pies in Le Stade de Gigg are up to scratch. And let's hope some of you are brave enough and daft enough to back Town at 9/2 tomorrow - it's a hell of a price in a two-horse race, especially when the other runner is as inconsistent as hell. Now don't start with your broken-down nag analogies - we have to be positive. There's no other choice. See yer.