Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Monday 12 October 2009
12 October 2009
"There are common denominators and that's not pointing fingers or blaming this entirely on a small numbers [sic.] of players," said Conservative councillor John Fenty in Saturday morning's state of the nation address, immediately before pointing fingers and blaming this entirely on a small number of players. All Fenty seems to have meant was that he wasn't naming names - but if the Town chairman is guilty of taking a long time to say nothing much at all then at least this time he's giving us plenty of lines to read between, and of the mixture of feelings experienced by the Diary on reading the councillor's statement, the strongest was anger. Anger at the players - whichever ones they are - who are seemingly able to look themselves in the face week after week despite taking our coin and putting their feet up. If they don't get on with the manager, and they don't want to play for him, you'd hope they'd nevertheless respect the fact that it's the fans who keep them in booze and Big Macs, and at least play for us. But just a few short hours after Fenty's words were published on Town's superb new official website, so our employees were proving him right again in their appalling but entirely predictable surrender to Burton Albion on Saturday afternoon.
So there's talk of new players this week and talk of the "weak-minded" culprits being shipped out pronto - but nobody seems prepared to adduce a name. What everyone can surely agree on, however, is that the Mariners' problems on the pitch are chiefly in central midfield, where Newell signed four players over the summer, of whom only one appears fit for purpose, and even then only when Town are in possession, and only after two months of the season is he beginning to approach match fitness. What nobody but the Diary yet seems to have noticed is that Saturday's referee Mr S Rushton comes from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and Burton Albion come from Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and the rules explicitly forbid the appointment of match officials from the same county as one of the teams, so the result should be declared void and the match replayed. Anyone fancy ringing up the Football League?
One name that can seemingly be absolved from blame is that of Adam Proudlock, in the Diary's opinion the best all-round forward at the club and, one daft red card aside, a player who has done fuck all wrong at all since he arrived at Blundell Park in January. All the more pity, then - but all the more typical of Town's luck - that the Shropshire lad will be out of action for four weeks as he recovers from the ligament damage he sustained on Saturday. Former Myspace Mariner and recent trialist Jammal Shahin, meanwhile, has rejoined the club on a one-year contract after apparently 'impressing for the reserves' in recent weeks. There is no truth in rumours, and indeed there are no rumours, that this week's emergency signings to plug the gaps in midfield will include Paul Ashton, Ben Higgins and Chris Bolder.
WEM-BER-LEY! WEM-BER-LEY! There's always a good Dulux Cup run to distract us from relegation, of course, and Saturday's draw for the area quarter-finals has given Town an away trip (as always) to third division Leeds United on Tuesday 10 November. The club's superb new official website has celebrated by basically stealing the write-up from the one on the Leeds site, while the Yeovil site Ciderspace is a tad discombobulated at the decision of Sky to screen the match live, contending that there's "almost no opportunity of a cup shock against a Grimsby side currently struggling at the wrong end of [the fourth division] in 22nd position". As much as we enjoy Ciderspace - one of the best club websites in the lower divisions - a little more homework might have been in order here, because given Town's awesome recent Dulux Cup record against third division sides, it's surely the home win that would represent the real cup shock at Elland Road next month. WEM-BER-LEY! WEM-BER-LEY! We're in 90th place in the league with a sense of overwhelming crisis and and we're off to Wemb-er-ley!