Cod Almighty | Diary

Great passion

9 January 2015

Retro Diary writes: You may or may not have heard of Simon Kuper. He's the economist who says that football managers don't make any difference to the success of a team. He has worked out that 92 per cent of performance is accounted for by player wages, and nothing more. Managers, he says, are just mouthpieces for the club, and from a results point of view they could be replaced by stuffed teddy bears.

I can't accept this entirely. Some people are evidently better businessmen, and better motivators, than others. As football managers go, Paul Hurst is calm, sanguine and likeable. His body language indicates honesty, and by the standards of his profession he is articulate and philosophical. He has that slightly camp regional accent which comedians use to such good effect, and he can be genuinely funny. If I were stuck in a lift or a jail cell with him, it would take him a long time to drive me mad.

But his, our, team is underperforming – so is it his fault? Could anyone do his job any better? Is he actually just a fall guy for insuperable obstacles and inevitable failure? Does anybody actually want to come and play their football here any more? Would screaming at the players from the touchline even make any difference? Does anything he does matter a damn?

While a manager's job has its obsolescence built in, we wouldn't want to see anyone lose their livelihood too soon on the back of impossible goals. Nobody can argue that Hursty has brought in better players than the ones they replaced (with the possible exception of Mackreth, for whom we still hold out vague hope of an Indian summer). This is the bit Hursty can do, and he's done it pretty well.

I occasionally listen back to his interviews and pretend he's talking about Tamworth or North Ferriby United. It's amazing how much more sense he seems to make when you do that. Of course we'd like to win the Trophy. Of course fourth in the Conference is a great achievement and a good springboard for the second half of the season. Of course we don't read too much into two bad home results.

But we're not Tamworth, are we. Yes, I know we have no god-given right to succeed, but being stuck in this division for Grimsby Town is like being handcuffed to a lamp post with your trousers down. We need to get out of this situation, like now, and we're going to be pretty bad-tempered until we do.

We in the stands can't believe that this urgency doesn't seem to extend to the pitch. If we're losing at home, we're shouting ourselves hoarse because we don't want to see another heap of celebrating part-timers as long as we live. At one-one with eight minutes to go, against a team that only trains on Thursdays, we should be seeing all attacking hell break loose. We shouldn't be looking at an unimpassioned manager casually removing Neilson. We shouldn't be driving home afterwards hearing him tell us how well we played, and not to forget we're still fourth.

According to today's Telegraph, however, Hurst "is not feeling heat". Frankly, I wish he would get to operating temperature quickly and get this squad going a bit.

This week, put normality on hold again: it's the competition everybody wishes would go away – it's the Trophy. So do we want Town to go down to a third straight home defeat against a team with four of our ex-players? It's an unpleasant dilemma. Why oh why didn't we just do what Barnet did and show our faces briefly before a effecting a sneaky but calculated exit?

I've decided, for my sanity, that I'm just not going to look. The defeat will be out with the recycling by next week, and we can get Gateshead back in the league on 4 April. Don't give me scoreflashes – I'll be spending tomorrow afternoon in a well-known orange DIY outlet with my phone turned off, looking at garden furniture and fantasising about summer. For those who are interested, Magnay returns to action to face his old team.

Anyone viewing the 'Grimsby – the movie' page on Facebook will have been treated to a selection of sneak previews from the forthcoming Sacha Baron Cohen film. We all know by now he's going to make the place look very, very bad. Unrealistically bad, I always think, might actually be better than anything some dullard might actually believe.

If you harboured any perverse hope that some respite might be afforded by some decent football crowd scenes in the film, think again. We look like a couple of taxi-loads of clueless minnows who don't even know the tunes to common terrace songs.  It seems that our confidence is going to take a mauling in the months ahead, and we're going to have to try find a way to turn it to our advantage. How, exactly, might take some thinking about.

This week we welcome Ollie Palmer on loan from Mansfield. He wears a headband.  On the basis of recent weeks, there will be a few unattended tap-ins to be had – welcome, Ollie, and enjoy; you've got a month.