Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 4th June

4 June 2013

Responding to the request for good players in poor teams, Richard Lord asks: "Am I stating the obvious by claiming Clive Mendonca?" He then makes the case both for his inclusion – "He scored 20 goals in the side that got relegated in '96-97" – and omission: "but I guess we already knew he was a talented striker anyway."

Rich goes on: "We had the makings of a good team that year, but we really suffered in the absence of Paul Groves. Loads of players under-performed, Laws sort of lost it – and it wasn't Jason Pearcey's finest season either, but Clive was just different class." Those 20 goals broke a long-standing Town scoring record. According to Middle-Aged Diary's memory, you had to go back to Jack Lewis to find a striker who had scored more than 15 in a season, and to Mendonca add the glorious introduction to first-team football of John Oster (who unquestionably walks into a 'good player, shame about the team' XI). We have had promotion-challenging sides who played less good football than the side relegated in 1997.

That side begs consideration of a counter-factual history. Suppose that, instead of wasting a few months on an unsuccessful attempt to lure Jack Charlton to Blundell Park following Laws's inevitable dismissal, making clear that Kenny Swain was regarded as no more than a stop-gap, the club had got on the phone to Alan Buckley a few months earlier than they finally did. A season later, he was to coach the same defenders into one of the most effective defences in the league. It is not unreasonable to imagine that he would have brought Groves back with him immediately. There are objections – he might have been suspicious of Oster's exuberance, and reluctant to accept the evidence that Gary Childs's best days were behind him. But the balance of probabilities is that we would have avoided relegation – and might never have made it to Wembley in 1998.

The close season is a good time for considering what ifs. We might, for instance, never have heard of Buckley if Marc North had converted a last-day penalty against Aldershot (Thanks Rob – Ed) to spare Bobby Roberts's side from relegation in 1988. That is another instance of an apparent blessing in disguise (apparent as, who knows, Bobby Roberts might have taken the club to great things) but there are plenty of others to consider. John Darnell has reminded us of John Fenty's ill-timed fall-out with Russell Slade days before the play-off final. Did that affect the performance at Cardiff, and even had Town lost, might Slade have rebuilt the side for another push the next season? Still more dizzying, imagine that Buckley had never been lured to the Baggies, when the Town side he had nurtured was nearing its peak?

There are no lessons in this, nor is it an exercise in wishful thinking. It's just good argument fodder when there is no factual stuff to chew on. Keep those emails coming in.