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Diary - Friday 6 July 2012

6 July 2012

Mardy Diary writes: Other than the capture of Aswad Thomas, which I'm quite excited about having seen him play one match (hey, these things don't have to be rational), it is all rather quiet on the signing front. This forces some people to enter a state of panic stating that all the good players will have gone and we'll be left with just the chaff. Others counter-claim that actually early signings mean you just pick up those players who are unwanted and desperate to sign for anyone - the real quality is worth waiting for as those players will be considering offers from a number of clubs.

The truth is invariably a mixture of the two: you spend ages chasing players, paying over the odds because their agent says Chelsea are interested and then they turn out to be shite anyway. Although being fair, it's really that you sign a bunch of players at different times and some of them are decent, and some not so. I wonder if there is a correlation between the time a player was signed and how good they've been as a player for Town. I personally can't be arsed to do the stats, and one-time stat mental CA contributor Andy Holt is now too busy avoiding numerous earthquakes in New Zealand to do the business.

Off the top of my head I could probably pick examples to back either argument: Slade for example spent weeks convincing Michael Reddy to join the club, but then forgot about a goalkeeper and left-back leaving us to offer last-minute contracts to Williams and Bull. Whereas Rodger was quick to sign-up Rankin but waited until the last minute to fend off competition for Ravenhill... oh. Well, you see this is why somebody other than me needs to analyse this properly.

In actual proper footbal news the club have actually bothered to tell us who the youthers are this season. There's a video on the SNOS where they get to introduce themselves and probably do some sort of show-and-tell, I dunno - and the Telewag follows this up with a further introduction. What is noticeable this year though is the number of sensibly-named youngsters: proper names like Paul, Sam, Lee and Tom. That's what we like to see. The fact that there's also an Ellis and a Caine is offset somewhat by one lad called Hamish. Even better, and what's sure to please unhinged CA reporter Tony Butcher, is that they all appear to have sensible haircuts - although Hamish appears to have gone for the Rob Atkinson cut.

The future of football in Grimsby is clearly safe. Have a good wee... oh God, look at the fucking weather...