Cod Almighty | Diary

Anything's better than posh isolation

23 September 2019

Trentside Diary writes: It’s all about confidence isn’t it? I believe it is. Picture the mighty Mariners on Saturday.

The first half we’ve been described as turgid and we certainly bumbled around. Can you bumble and be turgid? Who knows? Passes didn’t connect. We knocked the ball on into space and nobody was there. We were beginning to think we had played the Silkmen once too often recently and we were cancelling each other out.

It was certainly looking like it until a few moments of brilliance from Ethan Robson, another Black Cat who could be very good for Town. He didn’t pass, he didn’t flunk it and their keeper’s comedy flop onto the ground was just perfect. It was nice not to be running to catch up for once – and how confident did we suddenly look?

The passing was more creative and more accurate; we were unlucky not to get a second. Just a spark of confidence and we look like a completely different team. Confident, stylish and on our day capable of beating anyone. If we can do that every game we’ll be in the mix at the end of the season. As a little distraction though, we do have the small matter of the League Cup this week.

I have just found out that Wednesday evening will be without incident because VAR will be operation. Could anyone write that sentence and genuinely believe it? It really has been introduced to satisfy the big money of the top division. How can you claim it’s the best league in the world, as the BT/Sky pundit clones are obliged to do, when occasionally there are decisions that, when you have watched them over and over in slow motion with lines to make sure your wobbly eyes aren’t mistaken, might have been wrong? No, you need the Wizard of Oz in a VAR hub to tell you it was clearly and obviously wrong.

It seems that if you fail to shave, haven’t had a haircut or your socks are 2mm too thick, then you are very likely to be offside. There must be someone out there who attends the odd match, rather than only ever watches it on TV, who can defend VAR – but the paying punters who I have spoken to aren’t keen, irrespective of their team.

We know how picky many referees are. There are far too many who make the decisions more about them than the game. Those who claim a decision was made entirely for the good of the game, like Ross Joyce, well, we know how that ends.

Will we get to the point where you can’t celebrate a goal for several minutes just in case it’s reviewed? Where’s the rush of adrenalin? Where’s the fun in that? If the ref or a linesman rule out a goal it’s done almost immediately, but when they use VAR it takes ages. Ironically, those who thought it was a good idea might just be undone by the unintended consequences. People getting more disillusioned with the games and that killer: fewer goals.

Let’s wish for an incident-free match on Wednesday. Safe travels to all going. UTM!