Cod Almighty | Diary

Push pineapple grind coffee

24 August 2023

Here we are again Gentle Reader, just you and your Guest Diarist gently singing the blues on a cloudy August morning which I have spent picking figs and exhorting the heavenly blues to stop growing and concentrate on flowering for me. Before I get any further in I should apologise for the lack of concern for your mental health in the faux-empathetic load of words prefixed to yesterday's diary. So if YOU were affected by the scathing, surgical dismantling of the frankly pathetic whining of one Mick Needham back in the dark days of 2010 then bugger off somewhere else and have a little cry on your own. Readers? We only need you Gentle Reader and that will get us through to the next one. We don't care how many social media followers we have and we certainly never feel the need to talk about our feelings - talk shit get banged as the young ones say.

Me, I like a pithy interjection as much as the next person but I can't listen to podcasts because they seem to go on for ages and almost always involve people laughing at their own jokes and self-indulgently talking over each other. What I need is the ninety second edit which should be comfortable enough to include all the best bits. But podcasts appear to be here to stay and my youngest tells me they are a great distraction at work, so carry on folks. Just know I won't be there - I'll be listening to birdsong and the sound of plants growing. Basically it's a case of I prefer my fantasies to yours anyday.

I have always been a proponent of the idea that a player's name (and hair style) should be among the factors considered when signing someone. Looking back over the last 20 years it would have probably helped considerably. It is much better now of course with all that big data to look at. I remember Mr Fenty proudly mentioning that Shorty and Shouty "had a laptop". So that's where it started. And then all that talk about Jolleykins being a whizz bang trader or summat.

Now we have actual people employed to just gobble up data all day and every day so that at the end of their shift (I imagine) the computer vomits out a punchcard with a player's name on it. And my word the combination of all that stuff we now know we know plus a big bag of cash after a good cup run has resulted in us getting some really good players. So why change what is obviously a winning formula? Well, sometimes you just have to say hang the data, hang the expense, this is the bloke we just have to sign. He is young, he is French, he plays centre half in Germany and he has the best song imaginable. His name? Dan Axel Zagadou. See yer.