Cod Almighty | Diary

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings

3 May 2016

A world where Leicester City can be champions is a happier world.

Most non-League clubs have never played a champion of England and never will. But it's not so many years since Grimsby Town v Leicester City was a regular fixture. And it seems to your original/regular Diary that as our club has descended the league system, Town fans have made a huge psychological adjustment.

In the Buckley years, and under Kerr and Booth beforehand, we were the foxy poopers to the big clubs' pompous party. Oh, Bryan Robson, how you regretted telling the media your Middlesbrough players should expect to win at "places like Grimsby" after the Grimsby team read the clipping on the dressing room wall and then beat you 2-1. Oh, Wolves fans, how silly you felt after singing "Will you watch us on TV?" to us just before we won at Molineux and prompted the spectacular implosion of your promotion challenge. We were Jarvis Cocker storming the stage at the Brits in 1996 during Michael Jackson's big messiah thing and disrespectfully wiggling his bum.

A decade or two later, and three steps down the pyramid, we are now precisely the sort of club we used to delight in beating. Fatally obsessed with our past status. Prevented from enjoying anything by our own sense of entitlement. Fans with a sense of their club's and their own importance which is partly justified but largely inflated to the point of ridiculousness. Bloated, burdened and perpetually angry, we've lost all sense of fun in the football. We've become exactly what we hated. We are now a sort of Vanarama Leeds United.

We know how this has happened. Town were in the wrong place at the wrong time – a poorly supported second-flight outfit, we were more reliant than any other club on the ITV Digital money when Carlton and Granada pulled the plug. But that misfortune has been compounded by carelessness. Other than the clubs deliberately run down by predatory, asset-stripping maniacs – your Chesters, Mansfields, Wrexhams and so on – GTFC since 2000 have undergone executive leadership that has been catastrophically poorer than at any other professional club in England.

Other than a smattering of Nouveau Fan shitlarks, there can scarcely be a fan alive who isn't deliriously happy to see the English championship go to the east midlands instead of, say, west London. Even the new president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, has apparently described Leicester's title win as a "fairytale" and a "beautiful story".

First of all, then, scrap the Premier League. It is exactly because of the Premier League's policy of reverse-Robin-Hood wealth distribution that success for teams like Leicester is now a once-in-a-lifetime event. If you've enjoyed the Foxes' astonishing championship, or if you're as bored as me with other footballing outcomes having become so samey year after year, then join me in arguing that the Premier League should be abolished. Impossible? They said that about Leicester winning the title.

Second, identify all those shitlarks like Charlie Stillitano, the American sports executive in recent talks with Premier League clubs, who wants Leicester to be banned from entering the Champions League because they're not glamorous enough to maximise TV advertising revenue. Identify them, get them the fuck out of our game, and never let them anywhere near back.

Over at Blundell Park, those who run our own beloved club have decided upon the best way to sell the nowhere near enough tickets allocated to Town fans by our play-off semi-final opponents Braintree Town. This is to open the ticket office at around 9:45pm this Thursday, immediately after the semi-final's first leg, thus ensuring a grand exodus of Town supporters from the stands at precisely the moment in the tie when the players will most need loud, committed and plentiful support.

A world where Leicester City can be champions is a happier world. It's a world where Braintree Town or Dover Athletic can reach the Football League. And it's a world where Grimsby Town can climb the divisions once again. It's a world where there are criteria for success other than money and status. Fortunately for all of us, those include team spirit, honest determination and even great support. Unfortunately for some clubs, they also include not being run by bumbling fuckwits.