Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 26 August 2011

26 August 2011

Mardy Diary writes: It's Friday, that means... yes... it's time to ramp your pre-match expectation up to 11 on the dial. Go on - if you don't hit the highs of hope you can't fully immerse yourself in the pain and despair of failure. And what better team to bring you those dashed hopes than Darlington. At home. Good old Darlo. You wish, plead, beg, pray that this time we just stop half-arsing around and give them the pasting they have been long, long overdue. But you know that, whatever the performance, a 1-0 reverse is just around the corner.

Perhaps a topsy-turvy start to the season is the best time to play Darlington. Perhaps we'll sneak a win this time - this is apparently the league where anything can happen in the next half-hour. Fleetwood the new Crawley? Pah - they're as shit as everyone else and have two of our former (inconsistent) defenders. No chance. Plus, we know how to win now don't we? We don't have that monkey on our shoulder any more. And we've also recently tasted heavy, gut-wrenching defeat of course, so we don't want any of that again. Although we're supposed to be moving on from that, I'm told. That's what the memo said anyway. In big, bold CAPITAL LETTERS.

Team news for tomorrow is that the squad is pretty much as it was although Anthony 'Churchy' Church is available again, or more available given that he was on the bench on Tuesday. Which is handy when we need to replace Tyrone Thompson after 63 minutes again, as Shouty reckons they're pretty much the same player. Same sort of player, sorry.

The Telegraph reports that Town may pack the midfield against Darlington, assuming that this means 4-3-3, although technically 4-4-2 would put 'more bodies' in the middle wouldn't it? Or 4-5-1? Whatever, we probably won't be playing "lob-sided" as we did against Cambridge. Or lop-sided either, one presumes. For more on Town's attempts to not lose 1-0 to Darlington, check out our ever-excellent if-always-slighty-rushed match preview. Phew!

As Shorty/Shouty have made quite clear over the past week or so, it's too early to be getting concerned about one or two bad results at the beginning of the season. If we win the next 300 matches then that debilitating defeat to Braintree will be nothing but a mere blip in comparison. Of course, one or two defeats and... well, you wouldn't sack your manager this early in the season would you? Oh, apparently you would.