Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 14 April 2010

14 April 2010

Mardy Diary writes: First it was Lincoln and then they won a few, then it was Cheltenham and then they won a few so we focussed on Torquay and they went and won bloody loads. And so it is now that our lonely, desperate eyes glance over at Barnet who've come to give us a bit of company down the bottom. Good ol' Barnet. Always had a soft spot for them, although that's disappeared a bit since they stopped letting us beat them easily. Of course, our hopes will be dashed further when they stick three goals past roll-over-Bradford on Saturday before having a mini-revival which lifts them to lower mid-table. Stupid division anyway. Stupid league. Newcastle and Leeds getting promoted? Pff. Some cheats in the cup final and another bunch of cheats at the top of the fourth division? Where's the fun in that? No - I wash my hands of this stupid league. I'm taking the moral high ground in relegation - it's all I've got left to cling to.

Neil Woods believes we can still do it - and, yes, there is still an outside chance. It's not over until it's mathematically over, but it still feels like it's over every time I look at the results. Not that I want to take anything away from the current set of players - those that played last night played well and kept going. Indeed, take away the context of the match last night and what you're left with is a bloody good, entertaining game of football between two good, attacking sides. It was a good game - and if we were anywhere except the position we are in most will have left that match in fairly high spirits. And both our strikers scored in open play - when was the last time that happened? Probably when Lester played for us. Oh Jack - it's not your fault, but did you have to try so hard?

The worse thing about all this though is the fact that we remain in limbo - there is still a chance we can stay up, we're not down yet. Half of me wants us to keep pushing this, to take it to the wire, so it all rides on the last game and we survive. The other half wants it over now so we can start the rebuilding - start planning - because what we don't want next season is half a squad by August, a poor pre-season which largely involves a piss-up in the south-west, a bloody ridiculous collection of badly organised pre-season matches, a team made up of loan players and journeymen, another season where we start five months after everyone else, another mid-season manager change, another mid-season clear out of players. People keep saying, in the usual places, that if we go down then Fenty needs to "get his cheque book out". No he doesn't - that is exactly the sort of panic that has got us in this mess in the first place. Throwing good money after bad at players like Conlon on their way down, looking to pick up another tidy pay packet. What we need are players with hunger, desire, ability and ambition - players on the way up that want to play for us and want to play in the Football League. Trying to buy our way out of trouble will just dump us further in the shit. If we must spend money, we spend it on the infrastructure of the club, we spend it on running the club properly from top to bottom. We spend it on stability and long-term planning. We invest in the future of the club instead of just trying to paper over the cracks. We act like professionals, or we don't bother at all.