Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 21 October 2011

21 October 2011

"It's grow-up time," said Shouty. Belligerent as ever but with a hint of vulnerability in his eyes. The Town managers return to favoured home turf tonight, buttocks smarting from two away defeats: one sort of a bit noble, the other excruciatingly bad. Get beaten tonight and the managers' lose percentage will dip the wrong side of 50. Your Guest Diarist daren't even calculate what the win percentage will be. But the performance statistics make grim reading in their early days of managing Grimsby Town. Town don't just fail to win, like under the last manager: they lose far too often.

Luton at home on a Friday night on pay TV. So even more fans than usual will get to watch the game as they traipse round town to the right pubs or wrestle with hookey internet streams. Luton are a top-five side on merit but still have a streak of inconsistency and their top scorer is back-knacked so new signing Tommy Wright may well play. As usual it's quite important that Town don't lose this one - I think both sides would be happy with a point, but that all depends on which Town team turns up, and for how long.

I'm used (for the past 30 years and more) to worrying most about Town's inability to score. This season, since our strikers started scoring, that issue has been dwarfed by our complete inability to defend. Shouty, in the subscriber-only match preview, was tight-lipped about changes in personnel. He wants to make them, that's obvious. He wants to punish people. But he knows that shuffling the pack is only likely to make things worse. Makofo trained yesterday, but for the first time so is likely to make only a cameo appearance. He's unlikely to drop the goalkeeper. Although McKeown made a couple of mistakes, you have to factor in the intense pressure the lad is under every time the opposition venture into the Town half: every attack it feels like a goal is coming. Shuffling Pearson, Kempson and Garner at the minute is akin to shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic and Shouty knows it.

But our back line is not that bad really - they can't be. Pearson excepted, they all played last season and although far from watertight we weren't crapping ourselves every time the opposition attacked like we are now. A year ago we were knocking on the door of the play-offs - timidly, I know, but we could just reach the knocker at least. Alan Connell's goals helped that hugely. But the defence had to play their part too, especially as we didn't really bother with a midfield in anything but name. What the hell has gone wrong? Perhaps it's a Grovesian arm-round-the-shoulder time, as this 'man up' ranting hasn't worked at all, has it?

The silence from the upper echelons of the club is deafening. Neither of the major shareholders are showing their hand. No-one at the club seems to be doing anything to confront the massive overspend despite being told that cash subsidies will dry up very soon. The supporters' trust is having another public meeting but hasn't announced any strategy beyond 'join the trust'. Yeah, it's business as usual everywhere in the eye of the hurricane. It is a little-reported fact that at the tail end of last season about 600 season ticket holders failed to go to home games they'd paid for. It would seem from this season's sales figures that most of them renewed to give the Mariners another chance. But with another indifferent season unravelling, can this be expected next time?

Of course a good win tonight, or even a battling (low-scoring) draw would put a better slant on things, at least in the immediate term. But I'd take a clean sheet over another Hearn hat-trick, I really would. See yer.