The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Ain't no party like a winter graduation party

11 January 2017

Two Marcus Bignots, there's only two Marcus Bignots. First there's Smiley Marcus on Town's superb new official website – cool, calm and highly collectable, happy with Sean McAllister's comeback for the stiffs yesterday, content with the trialists and the club's current recruitment activities. Then there's Furious Marcus in the Telewag, so furious at whoever is holding up his transfer business and shattering his target's lifetime dream of a move to Blundell Park that he fumes: "I hope they can sleep at night."

Furious Marcus insists that Town have "been ultra-professional in all of this – we haven't mentioned names", but somehow everyone knows he's talking about Jamey Osborne. And then you go back to Smiley Marcus, and you suspect that when he's praising Redditch United for letting three of their defenders join GTFC on trial, he's actually being passive-aggressive about Solihull Moors.

Either way, your original/regular Diary gets the impression that the Osborne business will come to a head soon, three weeks of the transfer window left or no three weeks of the transfer window left. And if the manager's former club continues to exercise its basic right to require a particular fee from another club in order to release a contracted player, Marcus will exercise his basic right to sign Luis Miguel De Sousa instead.

In the end De Sousa was one of five trialists fielded in yesterday's reserve run-out at Rotherham, which Town won 4-3, with Tom Bolarinwa scoring two or three and Biggleswade United striker Inih Effiong weighing in with one or two, depending on whose account you read. I don't know about you, but I didn't waste fifteen years of my life playing Football Manager in order not to develop a ridiculously inflated sense of excitement IRL when my club has a chance to sign a player with a name like Luis Miguel De Sousa.

Meanwhile everyone's favourite transfer target Omar Bogle has – somewhat alarmingly if you're a Grimsby fan, but excitingly if you support Brentford, Newcastle, Wigan, or any of the other 917 clubs 'linked with' the player – passed his driving test. If you know where he lives, be sure to do your fellow Grimbarians a favour and slip a bag of Tate & Lyle in his fuel tank every morning for the next three weeks.