Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 12 August 2011

12 August 2011

Here we stand then, on the cusp. It is officially the end of the new beginning for our managers. Next up, the beginning of the end. They've had everything they have asked for. It was a big mistake to say that in public, chaps. We assume, then, that the squad you have assembled is fit for purpose: we expect promotion. Do we heck.

Your Guest Diarist knows that our division is really hard to get relegated from. It is also impossibly hard to be promoted from. It is very easy to finish between seventh and 12th and that is, in all probability, what we will achieve. I asked last week if our squad is stronger on paper than at the same time last season. No-one has said it is. Pre-season games have demonstrated nothing other than an improvement in spirit.

But that's good in itself. If we have abandoned the quite remarkable habit, ubiquitous in the last campaign, of dropping heads, just giving up and conceding loads of late kerr-azy goals, then we will harvest quite a few more points. We need to - there are only so many jokes applicable to the throwing away of a two-goal lead yet again, and we've told them all. Twice.

If we are fitter (every new manager swears we are, but these two seem to have last-minute nerves on that) then we can actually prove to part-time opponents that there is a point to training five days a week rather than two evening sessions after work. This is something we have singularly failed to do so far in our non-League sojourn.

Is 'sojourn' the right word to use here? 'Sojourn' in English implies a temporary journey, but it comes from the Italian soggiorno, a word that doesn't just mean 'stay': it can also mean 'living room'. This is where we lounge. Sojourn is more like a short road-trip than the purgatorial feelings we Town fans get in the place they call the Conference. If we don't get out this season, we are condemned to call this place home. But hey, once you've dumped your league ego, life in the Conference is not so bad: mid-table purgatory, I'm sure there are worse purgatories out there.

Like, ohh, being trapped in an endless recession under an incompetent set of politicians each trying to prove they are a bit more right-of-centre than the rest of them while our kids grow up jobless, hopeless and full of inarticulate rage which vents as a need to prove they can trash things and get the 'stuff' which will mark them out as more powerful than the retail chains and the law. For one night anyway. There's no-one to vote for, no-one to work for and no-one to believe in.

Returning to the football, there's no-one to believe in when your hero gets sold for, in professional football terms, a paltry few quid. Losing Connell is massive. Sure, we have half a dozen replacements: notional strikers - big ones, small ones, identikit lazy ones. We have a daft winger who chases the ball like a greyhound coursing a hare: I'm waiting for the time at a small ground where he runs straight through the hedge at the end of the ground and then emerges scratched but smiling five minutes later.

We are going to split the goals scored evenly around the team, apparently. Last time we did that, Peter Sweeney top-scored with six and the team managed 45 all season. We need defenders who concede sloppy goals only very rarely, a midfield unit that protects them and creates chances, and strikers who convert a decent proportion of them in to goals.

I have no idea of the team to be picked to try and do that tomorrow. The managers are trying to be clever in their pre-match interviews by emphasising that the team tomorrow will be specially picked to beat Fleetwood. By implication then, not the best eleven players in their best positions. The Shouty one is clueless as to what formation the Cod Army will adopt. I think he is desperately unsure about who should fill several positions within the Town team too, and indeed what formation to play.

Everyone is fit bar Church, who is training again but needs a few days. Shouty says ten games in is the time when we will know if things are working. He says he needs us fans to get behind the team and not to mind too much when players make mistakes. Players will make mistakes, he emphasises, but they will try very hard to play well for Grimsby Town.

Ten games in he'll be telling us there are loads of points to play for. Ten games in might be too late: you need a good start to avoid the play-offs, you need a decent start to keep morale high among players and fans, you need good momentum or the end comes quicker than you expect. Think October, Shouty - get Shorty to look up the stats, mate. See yer.