Cod Almighty | Diary

A jeté ses jouets hors du landau

2 April 2021

A couple of years from now, when the football side of the business has shut up shop, and Blundell Park is used as a centre for teaching English as a foreign language, when a student says, "Yesterday, I heard the expression 'threw his toys out of the pram'. Please, what does this mean?", the tutor will be able to point to yesterday's statement from John Fenty. It is hard to imagine anything more counterproductive.

Half an hour before, the club and the remaining members of the consortium had put out a perfectly professional statement explaining that Tom Shutes had withdrawn, but they were still hopeful of reaching an agreement, and that no further comment would be made until a conclusion had been reached. It was disappointing news, but presented reasonably. It would have been just the thing to have in the most prominent position on the club's website until it can convey the news that Salford City have been beaten this afternoon.

Then Fenty barges in, like a power-maddened sheriff entering a previously peaceful bar and waving his gun about, calling for a truce. If he has been receiving abuse, or worse, he should take that up with the appropriate social media platforms, identifying the individuals responsible. To talk about it in a statement written to all "our great fans" is to make us all guilty by association. It is bound to be resented.

Tom Shutes's withdrawal from the deal at the last moment "for personal reasons" sounds feeble, but is perhaps a diplomatic fiction (and Middle-Aged Diary is 'out of the know' on this and most things): Fenty's way of writing about it is hardly evidence he is "working positively to try and find a way forward". As for a "divisive public approach", before he takes the mote out of Shutes's eye, he should first remove the bloody great big girder in his own: you can still find the fans' forum on YouTube, I understand (and worryingly, Fenty is coming across again as someone spoiling for a fight.)

To the many instances of Fenty failing to "act in the best interests of the club", let's add two words: Alex May. Fenty is not the "principal funder" of the club: that is all of us, and the events of yesterday afternoon have brought home the tragedy of how little say, how little knowledge even, we are allowed in a body which would not exist without fans. It is hard to imagine a takeover by Jason Stockwood and Andrew Pettit not being a huge improvement on the shambles of the last two decades, but it is still leaves us vulnerable to the whims and fortunes of a few powerful people.

But let this focus minds. Grimsby Town will survive: an AFC Grimsby Town would be up and running in no time if needed, there are so many people who care so much. But the club as it is currently constituted faces two grave threats. We might survive a return to non-League under new ownership, and we might stagger on hoping something will turn up in the Football League under Fenty, but a non-League club under Fenty would be in its death throes. This is Fenty's last chance to come out of this with his "benign" loans repaid.

Now let's forget all about the boardroom politics and hope Salford City take one hell of a hiding today.

Up the bloody Mariners.