Cod Almighty | Diary

Ups and downs

9 March 2020

Trentside Diary writes: I’d like to wish West Yorkshire Diary a belated happy birthday for Saturday and thank you for helping us on our way to three points by willing us to a win. And a belated We beat Scunny day to the rest of you.

I never get over-enthusiastic about derby matches. The emotions are so hyped up that it's not unusual to see a player perform badly because they are affected. Refs react and get card happy; who can forget Josh Gowling being sent off in 2015 after jostling with the pie-munching Matt Rhead? I still think it was a harsh decision.

For the Iron, Levi Sutton is probably ruing being brought on at 77 minutes on Saturday and sent off at 81. But the bragging rights are ours for the next few months. While Scunny don’t seem in a good place at the moment, we are living with the promise of things to come.

If ever there was an advert for how not to design access to a stadium, it’s got to be Glanford Park. Anyone who gets a parking space at the ground gets an extra hour after the game to enjoy it while they are waiting for the traffic to move. I can appreciate that the Iron don’t usually attract a big crowd but surely someone involved in the original design aspired to attracting a few more fans than usual. If Freemo happens, let’s hope the plan is to funnel traffic in several directions away from the area.

After all the rumours following James McKeown being on the bench last week, he has come out and dismissed the speculation. The manager had said he wanted to rest Jimmy Mack and have a look at Russell. The gossip continued but McKeown has now also confirmed that the "gaffer" wanted to rest him, and there was nothing more to it than that. What did we do before social media? Chewed over that day’s performance in the pub with speculation limited to what we could dream up. Now some latch onto the wildest theories and take them to heart.

More hares went charging off when pictures of ex-Rangers defender Bilel Mohsni training with Town appeared last week. Looking at his career, I’m not sure we would want him running out in a Town shirt: his disciplinary record could cost us too many points, but it's keeping the speculation up.

To top it off the "We would have been three points off the play-offs if we hadn't been experimenting in the last couple of games" line rose from the depths of social media. If we'd won every game we'd be champions but we're not. Get over it.

Fenty out. Day out. UTM.