Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Monday 18 July 2011
18 July 2011
Mardy Diary writes: That was alright, wasn't it - for a first run-out? It'd be a bit silly to expect too much when the players have only spent a couple of days kicking the ball about after all that running.
A few of the new players stood out for me already. Disley looked very Bolland-like in style and he looks a bit like him too. He seems like a proper midfielder who links the rest of the team up, which is something we've been missing since... Bolland, really. So fingers crossed on that. Spencer - although clearly not fit yet, and not looking like a player mobile enough to play 90 minutes - had both a heftiness and deftness of touch to match the great Lump (and that's high praise from me). A Livvo-style cult hero in the making, I reckon. Hearn was obviously over-eager to start with, but got better as the game went on and was unlucky not to score with quite a nice strike from the edge of the area.
The rest of the new lot? Silk: steady. Pearson: good in both boxes. Church: busy. Artus: skilful. Marshall: nicely surprising. The rest of them: as you were. Although Duffy looked interested and I've always thought people were harsh in their judgement of Makofo. He has something to offer.
There'll be a better test on Wednesday, of course. The players clearly need a few more games to get to know each other, but Sheffield are a few levels below us so I expect us to dominate posession a bit more than we did against a good-looking Rotherham side (I'm ignoring the presence of Newey here, as I did on Saturday).
Before all that, though, there's an oddly timed fans' forum. Tonight. It's always good that the club speaks (and listens) to the fans, of course, but I'm a little surprised by the timing of this one. People aren't really in a position to comment on the management or the players yet, so it seems the forum is likely to be dominated by discussion over the (inevitable) transfer of Alan Connell. And flasks again, probably. The Telegraph is reporting today that the fee for Connell was actually around £115k (plus sell-on) rather than the £150k rumoured earlier - perhaps this will be clarified by John Fenty tonight?
The Telegraph also seems to have cleared up the confusion over Josh Fuller's contract - in a report of him playing for Grimsby Borough. The Telegraph reports that Fuller left the club "shortly before his two-year deal expired", and I'm assuming "shortly" means months rather than years. This is at odds with a report on the club's official site in May, which had him under contract until 2012. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume he had one of those one-year options that wasn't invoked, shall we?
Which leads me neatly on to some correspondence we've had from the real Rob Andrews. I say 'real' as it turns out that the abusive emails we received last week were from someone who chose to use Rob's email address rather than their own. Rob says:
"I understand that you have received and published abusive emails written in my name. I would like to take this opportunity to state that at no time have I emailed criticising Cod Almighty and its content. I have contacted my internet service provider to complain and find out who sent these emails.
"I would like to also take this opportunity to state that this site, like others that discuss all aspects of what goes on at Grimsby Town FC, is needed and I totally support what they are trying to achieve.
"I do not condone abusive and non-constructive criticism against any website or against the football club itself."
Thanks for that Rob. Cod Almighty would like to apologise to you for inadvertently laying blame at your door. We are currently in the process of inspecting our server logs to find out who it was (although we do have our suspicions). We will pass on the IP address of those involved to Rob and to the relevant ISP as soon as we can.
One final note before I go: CA's own Pete Green has written a little bit about the Connell transfer for Swindon fanzine The Washbag, which you can read here. See ya.