Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 11 June 2009

11 June 2009

It is unlikely you, unlike Idle Diary, will have logged on to the interwebs and found an email from the Grimmo Telegraph with the subject line 'Newell in agent fury', and wondered if the Re-Newell one has bagged a part in one of Marvel's myriad of upcoming Avengers-based films. No, you'll have thought: "Oh Christ, here we go, Newell's off on an ANGRY RANT against football agents."

So, to find that the local rag has managed to drag a whole story out of a very brusque quote is somewhat a surprise in some ways. (And not so in other inch-filling during-a-quiet-week ways.) Just skip to the end of the story, past the bit about Bennett's two-year contract, past the bit about Barry Fry saying he's offered more money, and definitely miss the bit from Bennett's Mr 10%. "Ryan's agent is like most agents," starts maddened Mike, the lack of exclamation marks revealing it was all uttered in a calmer manner than the headline suggests, before leaving the reader to speculate that "if the FA and the Football League did their jobs properly" this would solve "the mess [the game] is in right now". And it is in a mess." What mess? What mess?

Thankfully, Guest Diary has been digging this morning to help join up some of the dots. Y'see, Barry Fry is 'avin' it large down at the chairmen's convention in Portugal, and 'avin' 'ad 'is first bid for the boy Bennett turned down, 'e's taken the chawnce, sat next to that geeeeezer John Fenty as 'e is, to offer 'im a bigger bag of wonga for the lad. While the offer has been raised, Fry has lowered his ability to be a irritating twat with a reasonable assessment of the situation: "We are going to try to bring him in, but Grimsby feel they have got an asset in the lad and they don't want him to go cheap, which is fair."

Such sense is refreshingly adult-like behaviour after Fry's recent crap attempts at psyching out Bennett, Newell, and Fenty. And as your diarist is having to rely on recruitment agents at the moment to procure further employment, I hope the Town manager also starts to put aside his dogged, continual digs at agents and gets a resolution that is best for everyone concerned. If Newell still doesn't get it, then maybe he should have a word with Nick Hegarty and his very astute and balanced take on the matter. Very sensible.