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Diary - Wednesday 4 July 2012

4 July 2012

I remember a time when Gareth Southgate waxed lyrical to the media about signing Gary O'Neill for Middlesbrough. Oh how I (and my Newcastle supporting friend) laughed. It's nice that a manager thought so much of a very average top division player, but Middlesbrough hardly benefited from his latent skill. He probably had one good game against the Smoggies and Southgate thought, 'Yeah, I'll have some of that'. Southgate, of course, is now in the managerial graveyard of ITV punditry, so he must know what he's talking about. And who knows where Gary O'Neill is?

It's as if the football Gods (or God - wonder why it's plural?) are smiling down on your West Yorkshire Diary today. Just when it went a bit quiet on the new signings front, the Fishy and Twitter went in overdrive last night when news filtered through that Braintree's highly thought of left-back, Aswad Thomas, signed a two-year deal at Blundell Park. Hurrah - something substantial to write about! But that's tempered by my shorter-than-usual lunch break at Bureaucratic Central, so if you want to know why Aswad Thomas is so highly thought of, regard the reports from our disappointing 1-1 home draw against Braintree in March (which marked the beginning of the end of last season).

Aswad Thomas now has the unenviable task of playing left-back in a Grimsby Town side and not incurring the wrath of the fans. Let's hope he's more of a Townsend and less of a Gallimore, Newey, Barnard or Bull (but to give Gallimore some credit, he was part of the record breaking defence of 1997-98). I wouldn't go so far as to call it a curse, but it's certainly a position in the team that appears to be difficult to crack. Let's forget about the time we played Danny Boshell there against Rochdale on New Year's Day in 2007, with disastrous consequences. Left-back is not a position that you can just 'fill in', and it's a relief to have a player on board that actually fits the bill.

This must be the most excited anyone has ever got over a left-back. Let us hope that Shorty and Shouty have got it right, and in a year's time the mighty duo aren't pundits on an obscure football programme on a subscription-based channel talking about non-League football matches on non-football nights.