Cod Almighty | Diary

Crewe have been part of the furniture so long they are one of English football's archetypes

16 September 2016

Does anybody out there know a good artist? What the hell is your faithful Retro Diary on about now, you ask? Well after taking a little holiday from talking, and thinking, about the new stadium last week, I think I need to saunter casually back onto the subject for a minute, to deal with a little issue.

There were some things that seemed OK at the time that nowadays nobody thinks are a good idea. New romantic haircuts, tower blocks, DDT, the leisure society, Mind Your Language, the Ford Capri and Welwyn Garden City spring to mind for me, but insert your own generation-appropriate equivalents. I have no doubt we have modern fascinations which won’t stand the test of time either, like Apple Watches and Facebook. Yes Facebook. Shut up.

Similarly, when I look at the two artists’ impressions of Town’s new stadium I do feel slightly like I’m looking at the first leaked blueprints for a Morris Ital, or being brainwashed into thinking what a revolution in modern living will be served by a hostess trolley or a Ronco Buttoneer.

The artist’s impressions of our new ground show what the future looked like before Glanford Park had so comprehensively failed the test of reality. Look at all that space for parking, you might once have said. Those clean lines. Those unobstructed views. "Plastic shed", we now sniffily protest – give us a stiff north-easterly off the sea any day. To me, our artist’s impressions essentially show Glanford Park but airbrushed and in red. Please, please, can we change it? Whatever joys you think the future of stadium architecture will bring, let’s say up front, right now, that they probably don’t include this.

Last weeks’ opponents Luton also have new ground fever, although they’re much more united in support of their new home than we are. Interestingly, our two clubs’ forums, the Fishy and the Luton Outlaws, ran threads about each others' new grounds last week. We were (rightly, I think) complimentary about theirs, but the sentiment wasn’t reciprocated. Among a bunch of more articulate put-downs, one 'outlaw' simply summed ours up in three words: "God, that’s shit".

To be fair, they were looking at an artist’s impression which harks back to the long-squandered days of the red Conoco hat. The ground in the picture is surrounded by fields - a desperate no-no in the modern age, and now, apparently, not going to happen anyway, because the enabling stuff will create an entertainment-filled concrete utopia the size of Disneyland. Apart from that, in the artist’s impression the stadium looks like it’s been chucked together as cheaply as humanly possible, even from a thousand feet in the air. At least the artist has realised that 'same-all-round' grounds look better if they’re bigger, and provided us with some Matchbox cars and elves for scale.

In the end, we may come to view the long delay in getting our new ground as the best thing that ever happened to us. Pitching in at the wrong moment in history might have landed us with a Colchester-type monstrosity, and surely there’s nobody who still thinks that’s a good idea. Let’s just hope somebody round here has noticed that times have changed, and the link between good design, function, happiness and profitability are now well-established.

Or, and this would be my solution, we could just hand a blank canvas and some prize money to some up-coming nutter genius from Central Saint Martins (whose lack of an apostrophe clearly indicates artistic excellence), with no more detailed brief than it has to hold 14,000 people and have themes of asymmetry, 1920 and fish. The result of that I would dearly love to see.

So can we have a new artist’s impression, please? It doesn’t matter if it’s not exactly how it’ll be – we understand that compromise is part of life. But something with the vaguest whiff of imagination, at the very least, would calm the nerves no end.

Tomorrow it’s Crewe – a club who’ve been part of the furniture for so long they probably count as one of English football’s archetypes. Rather like us, they’ve been through periods where they’ve punched above their weight (though without actually winning anything), due in large part to the extended tenure of one of English football’s true managerial legends - Dario Gradi. Gradi’s devotion to this single club makes our own Buckley years look like a flash in the pan. His guiding tenets - attractive football and, as Middle-Aged Diary highlighted yesterday, the need to continually bring through youngsters – are still emphasised to this day. Gradi remains at Gresty Road overseeing the operation as both Director of Football and Director of Academy.

As a trivial aside, the dance music act Dario G (actually Crewe fan Paul Spencer) is named after the great man, making (I think) Gradi the only football manager with a string of almost-decent chart hits in his name. I’m not counting Diamond Lights, by the way.

For us, Boyce is out, but Brandon Comley may be OK despite a bug. Dan Jones, Rhys Browne and Sean McAllister are on the way back to fitness but may not figure. Browne was particularly unlucky with his injury, which he only sustained as the final whistle blew in the Hull pre-season friendly. He’s doing yoga to help the recovery, something he describes as "harder than it looks".

The ref is Michael Salisbury, interestingly the son of Graham, who was the man in the middle four weeks ago against Orient; you remember, the prat who apparently sees penalties but doesn’t give ‘em. God, you’d think it was his job or something.

For the record, Omar Bogle once went to Crewe on trial whilst playing for Solihull Moors, but unusually for a club with such an eye for a youngster, they let him slip through the net.

UTM