Cod Almighty | Diary

A bit of a do

22 November 2017

Let's take a minute, in the light of last night's spirited and much-improved performance against Swindon, to consider the long term and the short term at GTFC.

In the long term, your original/regular Diary believes our football club is likely to be damaged by the mostly poor executive decision-making and public relations of the current regime. In the short term I don't like it when the team concedes a goal.

You might make a case that, ultimately, the team has conceded a goal because the defenders or the goalkeeper aren't very good, and that this is because the manager couldn't coach them very well, or deploy them to the best tactical effect, or sign better ones, and that this is because the owner appointed an inadequate manager, and so on and so on. And over the long term there's something in that. But in the short or immediate term there are good reasons to separate out the conceding or scoring of goals from the executive leadership of the club.

When Town concede a goal or lose a game, I don't often lose my rag completely, because I've been seeing Town do that since 1979, and you get used to it over time. I might groan or put my head in my hands, or even swear a bit. I don't shout "Fenty out" when Town concede a goal or lose a game, because my support for a change of ownership at the club is not conditional upon the immediate circumstances on the pitch. When we score a goal, or win a game, I don't suddenly forget every one of John Fenty's actions or utterances that I've disagreed with. (Although I believe one thing he deserves credit for is sticking with Paul Hurst while the headbangers wanted him sacked for finishing third.)

It's only fair for the non-chairman to be held accountable – in a civilised way – for his stewardship of our club. But if we link his performance in the role too closely with, say, Nathan Clarke's performance at centre-half, then there's a danger that when Town have a decent run, Fenty will get off the hook. Form, they say, is temporary. Lack of class, sadly, seems to be permanent.

In the eyes of some people, on the other hand, to make any sort of criticism of the directors is to disqualify yourself from the status of fan. The eccentric lickspittles you find occasionally on social media, who appear to confer a sort of infallible god-like status upon wealthy middle-aged men in suits, can be safely muted, and you move on. It's a little more troubling, however, when the same attitude is taken up by a major investor in the club's new stadium.

Work your way through this thread and Stella Lewis can be found explaining that "if I didn't believe in John Fenty my company wouldn't be investing millions in your new stadium". Stella Lewis is listed at Companies House as a co-director of two dissolved firms with Chris Lewis, who is property development director at Extreme Leisure, the partner engaged by Fenty to realise his proposed new stadium on Peaks Parkway.

Now I don't know why Extreme promised to have already "agreed and secured full funding" for the project but didn't say where it was coming from. There might be a good reason for that. I don't know why, in the one year and two months since that announcement was made, the only further progress seems to be an artist's impression of the Fentydome II with some fireworks going off over it. There might be a good reason for that too.

But what I do know is that after seeing my club suffer relegation three times in less than a decade, engage in numerous embarrassing squabbles with the local media, hire and fire managers with disorientating regularity, allow the sickeningly fast disintegration of the only promotion-winning team in 20 years, get handed its arse at Ofcom by the BBC and in court by Boston United, show its "zero tolerance" approach to racism by refusing to ban a fan who pleaded guilty in court to a racially aggravated public disorder offence at Blundell Park, give an 18-month contract to a player who couldn't play because he can't get a work permit, sack the mascot on the grounds that people should pay rather than be paid to do the job, vote in favour of B teams being allowed into a competition explicitly against the wishes of the fans, and still not serve chips at half time, I will not be told that criticism means I'm not a fan – "with respect" or otherwise – by a passing Bournemouth supporter who can't distinguish your and you're.