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Diary - Tuesday 22 November 2011

22 November 2011

"It is a truth universally acknowledged by every Town fan that playing 4-3-3 at Blundell Park never, ever works." When she penned those words here yesterday, Miss Guest Diary came closer than Miss Jane Austen to an eternal verity of the human condition. Indeed, your original/regular Diary wonders whether, since football inverted the pyramid, any manager of Grimsby Town has achieved any sustained success at all with any system other than 4-4-2.

There are exceptions, of course. Town's outstanding comeback against holders Leicester in their October 1997 League Cup tie was built on a switch to 4-3-3. The cathartic 6-0 win at Boston in February 2007 was achieved using a 4-5-1 system favoured by Alan Buckley at the time. But these successes are always isolated. They only ever work in particular circumstances. The win at York Street followed a streak of seven successive defeats. Boston had no idea how to mark Straight Peter Bore when Town won possession and the 4-5-1 effectively switched to a 4-3-3. For Grimsby Town, deviations from 4-4-2 never do the business week in, week out. Witness Lennie Lawrence's desperate efforts to accommodate Steve Livingstone, Bradley Allen and David Nielsen in a front three. The side actually played well at Watford under this system and lost 4-0.

Back in the present, Shorty and Shouty, I seem to think, have yet to achieve a single victory with their 4-3-3 system. Granted, the formation achieved a creditable goalless draw at Port Vale in the FA Cup this month. But nearly every time they've used it, it's failed so spectacularly that they've had to change to a 4-4-2 in the middle of a match. Many supporters are describing the first 80 minutes of Saturday's game against Newport as the worst Grimsby performance ever. True, many supporters say that every time Town fail to win, whether it's against Newport or Newcastle. But this time they may just be right.

Lawrence, for all his failings, at least had the nous to revert to orthodoxy. Russell Slade, likewise, realised early on that the ambitious 3-4-3 system he wanted (and, indeed, had signed the players to fit) wouldn't get results, and switched back to 4-4-2 within a few weeks of his first season kicking off. So what about the Mariners? Let's see what the Grimsby Telegraph has to say about tonight's replay with Vale.

Well, there's a strange quote from one of the GTFC managers at the end, which morphs into a quote from the Port Vale manager halfway through ("They are still the favourites to progress. They are better away from home... Yes, they are a league below us but they are still full-time"). Darran Kempson will miss out, having picked up an an ankle injury in the Newport match. Michael Coulson, who missed the visit of Newport through suspension, returns to the squad this evening. But the formation? "It's not a case of the 4-3-3 being totally out of the window."

There's a school of thought that Shorty and Shouty, despite overseeing significantly worse form than Neil Woods before them, are benefiting from Town's vacancy for a chairman. That they're being spared the sack only by the lack of anyone to sack them. God knows the destruction visited on our football club by this insane short-term thinking. But you must wonder sometimes whether these two aren't their own worst enemies.