Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 7 September 2019

Division 4

Grimsby Town 0

Crewe Alexandra 2 Lowery (46), Kirk (90+2)

Attendance: 4679 (145 away fans)

Oh for heaven's sake, come off it. Grimsby isn't a centre of Da-daism.

Hewitt was efficiently adequate, though strangely subdued as an attacking force, but the Big Man At The Back was what stopped the wrecking Crewe from embarrassing, rather than merely beating, this turgid Town.

Today on Sesame Street the words are "disappointed" and "frustrated".

"We didn't make good enough use of the ball today – we didn't impose ourselves in the way that we have previously. We went a little bit too long too quickly"

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Artell ignored the ramblings of a purple-faced poet and sensibly, calmly presented the facts, just the facts, to the massed multimedia:

"It was a blatant penalty, the ref's got it right, but other than that I thought we were terrific. We were thoroughly professional"

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Enervated, defenestrated and educated by Cheshire grandmasters.

Town were devoid of everything: uncohesive, incoherent individually and collectively. They just looked a division below Crewe's standard. Slower in foot and mind, stodgy and static, tactically limited, flat-pack Town's screws were easily unthreaded by artisan craftsmen.

The left was a disaster zone, with Whitehouse's limitations again exposing Hendrie's uncomfortableness away from his moorings. Cook was largely invisible, leaving The Hess alone and lost against the world.

And all the while Town simply pumped up the volume of Big Balls to Big Jim for Big Nothing, for Ogbu was a second half melon and Green was playing in the Bananarama today.

Town looked what they are: bog-standard mid-table humpers, lumpers and dumpers. Reality bites. A salutary lesson for all.

New-improved Crewe with added heft for whiter whites and graded grains that make finer flowers.

These cool Cheshire cats have allied physical adequacy to their usual technical superiority. They easily stood up to the half-baked air raids and waltzed around Town's weaknesses at will. Their keeper was suspiciously stuttering when fly-kicking and, when pressed, the defence tended towards slapstick and slice, but boy oh boy were they a football team.

If this is what Jolley's aiming for then we'll be a happy, but we've a long way to go.

On this showing a fair wind, a kind winter and the repelling of January predators should see them comfortably in the play-offs. We all know that fun in the September sun can be just an illusion, but at least they have imagination.

They did go gentle into the night and didn't rage against the frying of our lightweight left.

Mr A Coggins

Well, the fluorescent flouncer got the penalty right. And that's that.

This tiny prancer didn't change the course of this game, or history, but he was erratically woeful, choosing to not see things he saw, we saw, ride the see-saw. No-one was very much in love with this mithering marigold. Another time, another day he'll cause ructions and eruptions: 5.189

Outthought, outfought, outplayed.

In a word: perspective