Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 7 July 2011
7 July 2011
Your Part-Time Diary has been well and truly out of the Grimsby Town news loop for the past couple of weeks - by taking my diary name far too literally and buggering off to warmer climes. I half expected to come back to find Alan Connell sold. I fully expected to come back to find that Church and Pearson had ended up at Fleetwood. And I certainly did not expect to come back to find a pretty much fully functioning midfield had been put in place. Throw in a couple of festive derbies and the football news has certainly taken the edge off the rainy weather on my return.
Things always look better before the football starts though and that's when we really get to see if all the individual conditioning and "working harder than ever before ever" pay off. Shorty and Shouty appear to have their work cut out if we're to believe Rob Atkinson's assertion that before this pre-season he had only thought there was one seven o'clock in the day. Presumably in Devon the other year, 7pm was the time the players were expected to join the manager in the hotel bar for some good old-fashioned squad bonding. Atkinson is looking forward to his early return to Blundell Park with Fleetwood on the first day of the season, and will be playing as a striker if his training top is anything to go by.
Luton have apparently had a bid for Connell rejected. The messageboards are full of conflicting opinions. We all know the situation: it will take a good bid to get Connell. Clubs have not yet been willing to put in a good enough bid for a 28-year-old with only one really good season at Conference level to his name, and as pre-season gets closer it becomes less and less likely that Al will leave - hopefully, anyway.
A week on Saturday and we're off, kind of, and we can put some performances and faces to the names of all these shiny new signings. Not much else is happening until then, so I'm going to show off my tan and I'll write a better diary next week, when I know what's going on again, honest.