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Diary - Wednesday 31 October 2012

31 October 2012

Arsenal played like a Sunday league side for 45 minutes last night and scored seven goals, while Reading played magnificently and conceded seven goals. This was Martin Keown's expert summary of Arsenal's incredible 7-5 multi-sponsored League Cup fourth round win at Reading last night. I'd struggle to think of any occasion or an environment in which Grimsby could concede seven goals and receive plaudits for their efforts. But maybe Martin Keown's just a shit pundit.

It was incredible theatre, they said on the radio last night, as your West Yorkshire Diary drove home from being at a theatre myself. I'm not sure if I can draw too many comparisons between a football match and the poet/comedian Tim Key, so I'll probably leave that one there. Suffice to say I heard the extra time shenanigans and I could scarcely believe what was going on.

As the extra time goals flew in, I began to wonder whether anyone was going to mention the Burnley match from ten years ago. Yes that's right - a whole decade has passed, almost to the day, since that 6-5 win. A lot has obviously changed since then. Well, everything has changed since then. Name me something we have now that we also had then. Go on. Simon Ford? Oh, well, yeah... suppose so. He scored the sixth goal that night, you know.

On the one hand I was hoping Arsenal would win 6-5, just because it might have been enough for someone to say the word 'Grimsby' on national radio in the context of something great. But on the other hand I was determined that no other club - least of all Arsenal - was going to register a 6-5 result of its own. In the absence of very little else to shout about, I'd quite like us to keep that 6-5 scoreline for ourselves.

I must have been to a few hundred Town matches in my time and I don't recall witnessing us ever clawing back anything greater than a two-goal deficit to get a result. I saw us win 3-2 at Accrington when we were 2-0 down at half time the other year. I've seen us come from two down at home to Palace and Wycombe in league games, but when we notch it up by one goal and make it 3-0, I'm really struggling for examples. I'm sure there will be, perhaps before my time, so if you have any memories of magnificent Mariners comebacks by three goals or more then please make sure you let us know about them.

And so we switch our attention from leaky defences to tight defences like it's the most natural thing in the world. The best left back outside the Football League, Aswad Thomas, has been explaining to the Telegraph why he calls himself the best left-back outside the Football League and how Town are dead good at defending this season. It's just slightly unfortunate that the local rag chose to broach this subject in the week following a match in which Thomas's individual error led to a defeat, but in the wider context of the season we have to admit that it's been the one and only minor indiscretion in what has otherwise been a commanding campaign for the England C international.

And it's nice to see the stiffs upholding the longstanding Grimsby tradition of doing badly when the first team is doing well. Keep up the bad work, I say.