Cod Almighty | Diary

Accentuate the positive

30 December 2013

Miss Guest Diary writes: I have serious tendencies towards a people-pleasing personality type, which always makes it more difficult than usual for me to write the diary after Town have lost. I want to be able to bring you good news but, with the exception of a 15-minute spell in the second half when they scored two goals and saved a penalty, the team's performance on Saturday was pretty awful. I'm not going to attempt any explanation of why that might have been – you can read what Mr Butcher has to say on that subject.

Instead I have been looking for a positive message to bring you. How about this? Town played seven games in December, winning five, drawing one and losing one. I think we'd all have taken those stats at the beginning of the month. So if they had to lose a game, wasn't Saturday's the best one? After all, Macclesfield are not local rivals, nor promotion rivals, nor has it meant exiting from the two knockout competitions. All in all, a good result then. No? Oh well, I tried.

Paul Hurst on Mariners Player says he is "disappointed" – but, really, how can you tell? He must be the most enigmatic football manager ever, having the same dour manner in post-match interviews whether Town have won or lost. Asked what he said to the players at half-time he said "to be better". And to give him and them their due, they were better in the second half, at least for a while. Did he say it to the team in the same deadpan way he responds to John Tondeur or did he shout it at them? I wonder whether he ever raises his voice to the players? Given that the team have lost just four games out of 22 since he has been in sole charge, I don't suppose it really matters, does it.

One thing I do really like about Hurst is that he doesn't criticise individual players after a defeat. This serves no purpose except to try and shift blame away from the manager and must be very bad for team morale. And good morale is sometimes the difference between winning and losing a game.

I was less happy to read that Hurst would like to bring in a couple of new players in the January transfer window. The introduction of new players to a squad is one of the things that can adversely affect team morale – a phenomenon I like to call the Curtis Woodhouse Effect. I am sure, and no-one will ever convince me otherwise, that Town would have secured automatic promotion to the third tier in 2006 had Woodhouse, Ben Futcher, Junior Mendes and Marc Goodfellow not been brought into the squad in January. Just saying...