Cod Almighty | Diary

我们只当我们唱钓鱼

12 February 2015

Scott Neilson may not have been fully committed to the cause, says Paul Hursts. In other news, a prominent resident of the Vatican is believed to have revealed his adherence to the church of Rome, while a large ursine mammal has deposited faeces in an area of forest.

As Middle-Aged Diary observed yesterday, Neilson had become – like Thomas Pinault, Graham Hockless and others before him – a stick with which to beat the manager who is unpopular for unrelated causes and excluded him from the team for probably quite valid reasons. Although Middle-Aged Diary said it a bit more catchily than that, I think. In the words of another CA contributor, nothing does more for the popularity of a Town player than his not playing.

At least Town didn't let Neilson go to Barnet (although Mariners' and Bees' relative league positions look increasingly irrelevant). Ultimately, your original/regular Diary feels, it's a shame he wouldn't knuckle down, because he could do lovely, exciting footbally things which other players couldn't. And over the past few years we've seen enough of this type of player to last a lifetime. Be it Barnet or someone else, the manager of his next club will inevitably reach the same conclusion as Hursts in 12 to 18 months' time.

Companies giving money to football clubs news now, and while the ever-tedious Premier League continues its campaign to have all the money in the world, GTFC have announced a one-year extension of their sponsorship deal with the Young's seafood brand. Yep, it really is 12 years since the previous deal with Jarvis ended in mysterious circumstances that were never properly explained. "If we didn't have Young's, I suspect we would struggle to find a sponsor that would come anywhere near to the support that they give us," grinned non-chairman Councillor John Fenty.

Now, John is a Clever Businessman, and as any viewer of The Apprentice, Dragon's Den and Barings Bank will be aware, this means he knows fucking everything about everything, whereas I've done jack shit with my life, so John is clearly my intellectual, moral and sexual superior in every way and has every right to kick me in the head for nine hours simply for typing the next two sentences. But I'm not altogether convinced it's such a good idea to shout quite so loudly about the detail that the Young's deal is more lucrative for the club by a million miles than anything else on the table. Unless, of course, you actually want the big boss man at Young's banging on the door of the publicity team, demanding to know why they've paid over the odds, and forcibly extracting a promise to put less money on the table next time the deal comes up for renewal.