Cod Almighty | Diary

Born snippy

6 October 2014

Hello, hello, hello, on this wonderful wet morning. We're in a familiar, if not comforting, place: miserable marinerdom and managerial moaning at the Voice of Grimsby for asking the most polite of obvious questions. It's the season of red mists and bellowing truthfulness as Town couldn't cope with the Dartford crossing and got lucky with Lennie. I'm Deviant Diary and I'm not going to take it any more.

Saturday afternoon? I was steaming, John. Steam-cleaning the kitchen floor, John. Saturday evening? Steaming John, steaming as Shorty audibly metamorphosed into Mr Snippy. Dizzy in the head and feeling blue? The things Shorty said, well, maybe they're true. He can't explain, won't explain his team selections any more. You can pinpoint the very moment when a Grimsby manager loses his job: the short, sharp snip at Sir John Tondeur, our local national treasure. Shorty, TMFKAS, Mr Snippy – the end is nigh.

Ah, that's all flim-flam; who cares if the manager hasn't got 'good PR'. Yeah, Alan Buckley and all that. But the Buckmeister General won things, consistently. Football is a results business, you say? I call as my first witness the statistician Mr TooGoodToGoDown. What a record Town have in 2014: 44 games played, 16 wins, 15 draws, 13 defeats. Moderate. Ample. Average. Enough to finish about 10th. There are 11 part-time teams in the division, 13 full-time. Management is about making the most of the resources available. Town are presently in the full-timer relegation zone.

Shall we end this marriage of inconvenience now, or wait until next year? Stop jerking that knee; succession planning is important. We have to make sure we let the right one in, not just grab at the first person we see walking past the window wearing a nice hat. Relax, successful businessmen will have a plan; they will not simply react to the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune. Nothing can go wrong now.

Stability? When does stability become inertia? Do we fear change? It's a matter of when, not if.

Even the Grimsby Reaper is slacking: when you're tired of reaping, you're tired of strife. Foyle lost his war at Southport after not getting sacked for beating Town. Perhaps the Beelzebub of the Bananarama overslept. Southport's Saturday crumble may put Tuesday's Town toshery into a proper perspective.

It's all very negative, isn't it? Lighten up, look on the bright side of life, be positive for John. Town'll thrash Altrincham tomorrow and all will be well again. After all, Alty are part-timers, stuck in the mudflats and in terrible form. Just look what happened to them on Saturday, they… oh. Maybe they'll do a Southport and all will be well again.

Do you go to Blundell Park to dream? It's a place we all know, the land of make believe.