Cod Almighty | Diary

Now is the summer of our discontent

28 August 2017

Open Diary writes: Well it’s not very good so far is it? This season, which started with optimism and promise seems to have tumbled away like a sandcastle washed away on the incoming tide of poor performances. Last Saturday's performance at Stevenage was as bad, if not worse than the previous one's and then, of course, we had to play Wycombe, of all people.

Of course, August may not be the ideal time for football. England are still in the middle of a Test series at that other game, people are spending time on various beaches on the East Coast and the kids aren’t back at school for another week. Still the jury has already returned a verdict on some of the close season's acquisitions. Beware of Burslemites bearing gifts would be one of them, and don't get seduced by long standing international credentials another, particularly when they've been achieved playing for Scotland.

Personally, I've never rated Port Vale as a place of footballing excellence so I can't say I'm surprised, although the new management team must have seen something which made them offer deals to people. I was somewhat reassured initially that Slade and Wilkinson were actually seeing these guys over an extended period rather than sitting down and watching videos of their performances. Slade's judgement was sometimes lacking first time around, but surely Wilkinson knows a centre-forward when he sees one. And I'd kind of hoped that Paul Dixon would be something like Robbie Stockdale was when he came.

Only right now it's becoming obvious that he's not. Which doesn't bode well. If Wycombe at home was a "must win" game let's run through the next four fixtures which are Crewe at home, Mansfield and Accrington away, and then Yeovil at home. Now none of them can compare with Coventry City and if we can't win at least two, which is what we did last season, then we'd all better get worried.
And September is definitely when the football season has begun. By September you'd expect things to be bedded in and for people to know how to play together. All the potential that was evident in the trial periods and in pre-season matches should be coming through on the pitch and in the results. And, anyway, you might say that, as of this moment, we are in no worse a position than Arsenal at this stage of the season.

So, let me scrape the bottom of the barrel for some remaining crumbs of optimism. The first is that at least we don't have to play on Bank Holiday Monday so there is some time to regroup and get the act back on track. The second is that good or bad starts don't necessarily mean that much. Buckley's 1998 promotion winning side started badly for example and the 2003 season when we fell through the third flight started out well. Funnily enough we also played Wycombe at home on the fourth match of the season that year too and won 3-1 and look what happened then. And there's still time to do something to strengthen the squad before the transfer deadline.

So you never know.