Cod Almighty | Diary

Is it that time already?

27 January 2015

We have news, we have a match tonight, and you have a Middle-Aged Diary who is pushed for time. Sorry if you end up feeling short-changed. Read the latest letters page instead, with some top-class reminiscing about the League Cup quarter-final and Dave Gilbert's missed penalty which the diary touched on last week.

We have two new players with us. Both of them have been released by their former clubs, so they are ours, all ours, until the end of the season.

Christian Jolley is a winger or forward. Fortunately for Wimbledon and Newport, he rejected the call of nominative determinism, preferring to help them regain their places in the Football League rather than take up a career as a padre in the Royal Marines. A quick scoot on a Newport messageboard suggests that he is leaving with good wishes but no regrets.

Gregor Robertson is a 31-year-old left-back who has scored six goals in his career, two of them for Scotland under-21s. Among his five previous clubs are Rotherham and Nottingham Forest, so he is a known entity for both Paul Hurst and Chris Doig. It looks like he's been kept out of the first team at Northampton, his last club, by Tom Newey. But then Newey used to keep Gary Croft out of the side under Russell Slade, so let's not leap to alarming conclusions.

This transfer activity has been funded by lottery millionaires Sue and Lee Mullen. Lee Mullen told the Telegraph he was "a bit fed up with some of the stick that John Fenty and the board were getting", so that's Cod Almighty told.

Jolley, Robertson, Lenell John-Lewis and Scott Neilson are all available for tonight's game at Eastleigh. You'd imagine Robertson is bound to start in the continuing absence of Aswad Thomas. Jon-Paul Pittman and Scott Brown are also unavailable with a poorly knee and hamstring respectively.

The match at Eastleigh is one of those games that can loom disproportionately. It is our game in hand on Macclesfield and Bristol Rovers, so if we win the table will take on a bit of a look of the three clubs pulling away from sides in contention for one last play-off place. On the other hand, Eastleigh have played two games fewer than the Mariners, so if they win, we will look like a side scrabbling for fifth. The reality is that quite a lot of cups will be raised to lips and a lot of slippage will occur between now and season's end. So, unless Town play like Brazil (that's the 1970 team, not the 2014 one), let's not go overboard.