Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 14 April 2011

14 April 2011

A few weeks ago John'll Fix It Fenty fixed it for Town to stop their fog-flooded match against Rushden, which they happened to be losing, and play it again from scratch yesterday. The logic was that, by this point, the shiny new manager(s) would be in charge and we would probably win, thereby cementing a play-off place, pissing off the cocky cockney Justin Edinburgh and vindicating our chairman's underhand and embarrassing actions. For some reason the fact that Grimsby are pretty shit no matter who happens to be sitting/standing/crouched in the foetal position on the touchline was not factored into the equation. Nor was the commonly held belief that changing your manager once a season is certainly not a surefire way to improve results. Did Town grasp the reprieve handed to them? Did they fuck. Can we blame them? Can we fuck.

Grimsby won't reach the play-offs and they won't get relegated. Most of the players have been here for less than a year. They were brought here by one manager, to play a certain way, with the intention of stabilising a sinking club and building a progressing team who would, in the next few seasons, be able to win promotion back into the proper leagues. I don't know if Grimsby have a mission statement, but your Part-Time Diary thinks that would be a pretty good one. But that's all gone now. Now there are two new managers, intent on telling a lot of the players that they're shit and they can fuck off in the summer and to play in a different way. They're more aggressive than Woods was and they're winners - well, they were winners, until they came to Blundell Park. They haven't got a win for Grimsby yet. Is it going to be another 25-game winless streak like under Woods?

I doubt it. This team is better than the one Woods inherited and they're in a poorer league. They probably will start getting results, maybe they will do OK, but I'm not holding out any hope for good results in the rest of this season because the goalposts have been moved; Woods out, Shorty and Shouty in. A complete change in style will take time and money and so there's at least another season of building ahead. Again. All of which means I can't blame the players or the managers, yet. Maybe it's Richard Lord's fault?

So we drew with Rushden this time. Fenty only succeeded in stringing out a miserable season with an extra game, and an extra meaningless point. I wasn't there so this isn't a match report, but there's plenty about. Scott's angry as usual; he needs to stop letting it get to him. I'm not angry any more, just disappointed. I think that's how Woods seemed in the end too.

Anyway, it's almost over now, it really is - only two weeks of football left then a long summer to build up hope again. There'll be plenty of Telling The Telegraph, some new players to mispronounce and maybe the odd misleading friendly result (see Leeds '09, Sheffield Wednesday '10). I'm looking forward to it.