Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 6 January 2011

6 January 2011

Mardy Diary writes: I wonder what the steps taken were which ended with the Lincolnshire Echo running a story on John Fenty offering relegation avoidance advice to Lincoln City? I'm not daft enough to think that Fenty had a look at the fourth division table and then decided to give Lincoln a few pointers. He's done a few odd things here and there, but that would suggest a deterioration in mental health of worrying proportions. No, I think someone at the Lincolnshire Echo has thought: "Hang on, hang on, this is like Grimsby from the last couple of seasons, there's a pattern here."

But then what? Did they look at the wrong season and think: "Well, Grimsby managed to avoid the drop - I'll found out what did the trick for them"? Or was it more a case of what didn't work for Grimsby? I suppose tips on what not to do are still useful, even if they only cover one particular set of variables. Personally, if I were Fenty and was phoned by a newspaper asking for tips on how to avoid relegation my response might just be "no comment".

What's missing from this piece, unfortunately, is the Lincoln chairman's response to this advice - assuming that he actually reads it in the first place. Lincoln would need to sign or loan more than 15 players in January to get anywhere near the ridiculous player turnover Town had last season, which amounts to a complete change of the first team in the middle of the season.

Personally, I think we should be encouraging them to sign more players - preferably two or three who already live fairly local to Lincoln, maybe? A winger? A central midfielder? Perhaps an 'experienced' goalkeeper? They definitely need to bolster - that's my view. And as a local club keen to be in the same league as them, we should do all we can to help that become a reality.

News sure to please some but probably annoy more is the club's current 'January sale' of half-season tickets. These work out at about £13 a match and so give a saving of around three to five quid, depending on which stand you go in and when you buy your ticket. I can't be arsed to do the maths, to be honest - I'll leave that for others. I do know my early-bird Pontoon season ticket worked out at around 11-ish quid a match: although with postponements and me not able to make evening games I'm a bit down on that anyway. Not that I bought the season ticket to make a saving anyway - with missed matches and reduced tickets in previous seasons, I always knew it would more than likely work out more expensive. I'm just a bit lazy and can't be doing with phoning up for tickets and queueing and all that kind of business. And I like to see the club have a bit of money during the summer so there's cashflow to pay off the previous season's underachieving wastrels.

You know what would be nice, though? Some sort of loyalty scheme for those tragic enough among us who have continued to renew our season tickets during the 'decade of decline'. Failing that, some sort of memorial outside the ground to commemorate our loss of sanity. See ya.