Cod Almighty | Diary

I can feel the dancefloor fill with expectation

5 October 2015

Sometimes a football manager makes decisions that mystify supporters. Some of the supporters will say, that manager is an idiot. Some of the other, more thoughtful supporters will say, well, we don't understand that decision, but we're sure there are good reasons for it. There's a lot we don't know about football, and sometimes you have to allow for that.

So if, for example, the manager signs a player who the supporters don't rate, some supporters will say, what's he signed him for? He's rubbish. Get back to Burton Albion and take Iffy Onuora with you. The other, more thoughtful supporters might say, perhaps the manager sees something in Craig Clay that we haven't seen. He's a football manager, after all, and we're not. We don't know.

Another situation where managers' decisions sometimes mystify supporters is that of team selection. In this situation the more thoughtful supporters say things like, well, we don't know what happens on the training ground. And that's true. We don't. So for a player like Ben Tomlinson to be keeping a player like Omar Bogle out of Town's starting XI, we must assume that the training ground has witnessed something involving Bogle which is absolutely beyond the pale. An off-colour joke about someone's sister on the training ground, perhaps. Or an unspeakable incident involving the head of a dead pig on the training ground. Annexing Czechoslovakia on the training ground. You get the idea. We just don't know.

There's a lot we don't know about football. Particularly your original/regular Diary. I'm trying to imagine the sort of contribution Tomlinson made to Barnet's league title last season. It's hard. He looks to me like the sort of hard-working, half-decent centre-forward who'll score 12 goals a season for Nuneaton Borough and never in his life see the whites of promotion's eyes. But then I now have two children and it's hard enough mustering sufficient presence of mind to remember the names of my own team's players, let alone retain a detailed mental profile of a bloke I may or may not have seen play once in a 46-game season from a hundred yards away.

So if we are to be thoughtful supporters we must allow for the possibility that, when it comes to Ben Tomlinson, we just don't know. That we might be wrong, and Paul Hurst is probably right, and Ben Tomlinson is better than Omar Bogle.

The other possibility, of course, is that Ben Tomlinson isn't better than Omar Bogle but Hurst is so damn clever that he can see a way in which it's still somehow better for the team that Tomlinson plays. This might mean that Tomlinson links up more effectively with the other players. Or that Bogle will be so cross at being left on the bench – left to think about the seven times he scored in his first nine appearances, perhaps – that when he comes on as a sub he'll start to up his game and make this frankly shoddy goals-to-games ratio into something halfway acceptable instead.

People who are less clever than Hurst will point out that, far from looking like promotion contenders fulfilling a managerial masterplan, Town are now mid-table with just five wins in 14 games this season. His predecessor Neil Woods, they might add, had guided the Mariners to a higher league position than this when he was sacked. And Woods, the naysayers will quite possibly further adduce, had been extended considerably less than Hurst in the way of both time and money. That's what they'll say.

The thing is, though, the thing they're missing in all this, is that Hurst hasn't just done a UEFA coaching course. No. He got a badge at the end of it as well. His mum most probably sewed it onto his PE bag. Did Neil Woods have a badge? No. Well, I don't know. He might have. But I don't think so.

Neil Woods didn't have a badge. And Paul Hurst can use a computer. Or was that Rob Scott? We just don't know.

But if you force me to choose an explanation, I'll go with the masterplan theory. I think that's what thoughtful supporters will conclude. I think Hurst is leaving Bogle on the bench as some kind of psychological motivation trick, or overarching tactical masterstroke. Or a revolutionary political gesture like the turf Mohican on the Churchill statue, or avant-garde neo-Situationist performance art addressing both the frailty and futility of all human endeavour, especially man marking against a false nine. Something like that.

Why? Why this, and not the simple, obvious explanation that Tomlinson is far the better player? I'll tell you. Hurst doesn't do simple. Consider his qualifications and take into account the precedents.

As we have seen, Hurst has done a UEFA coaching course. And top managers who've done courses, badges and computers do this sort of thing all the time. They're always signing amazing players and then dropping them. It's just what you do when you're a top manager. Who can forget the treatment of legendary GTFC captain Paul Groves by equally legendary GTFC manager Sir Alan Buckley? During Town's legendary 1997-98 season Groves was in and out of the team like Darren Anderton on meowmeowbeanz. Supporters were mystified. We didn't know why. But by the end of the campaign, by some miracle, Groves had still racked up 68 games and the Mariners were promoted. Legendary.

And you remember when Eric Cantona and George Best had scored seven and six goals respectively by mid-September and Sir Alex Ferguson dropped them both and played Angus Deayton and a tub of lard up front for the rest of the season instead and they won the quadruple. Premier League, FA Cup, Milk Cup, World Cup. You remember that. It's like that. It's exactly like that.

Trust in Hurst. He's got a plan. Why do you think he's leaving for Rotherham? He's a clever man with a badge on his PE bag. The badge says: "I've done a course. I am clever. Trust me." Trust him. It'll be fine.