Cod Almighty | Diary

It's an online urban culture dispatch

31 August 2023

I do sympathise with Hurst, and football managers in general, when players they sign in the summer get crocked before the new season starts. The Mariners played the second half of last season with a Cheltenham loanee ploughing a lone furrow up front. Fallow times indeed, particularly as McAtee (loan) looked lost without Taylor (treatment room), and Danilo Orsi (striker) seemed only to serve Hurst as some sort of weirdly effective FA Cup weapon.

Our inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the final third of the pitch was a thing that got addressed this summer, with Rose, Wilson, Eisa, Pyke, Vernam and Gnahoua providing Hurst with plenty of attacking options, in addition to Khan.

We also bolstered our midfield, adding Conteh to Clifton, Hunt, Holohan, Green and Khouri. You’ll have to excuse your West Yorkshire Diary's cynicism at the signing of Andrews on a season-long loan from West Brom because I know how this goes: either he gets underused and returns to West Brom around Christmas time without anyone even noticing, or he does okay and Khouri never gets near the first team again.

I know managers want options; but for a few seasons now I feel like Town make signings that can either be described as panicky or unnecessary. Or both. One of the criticisms I levelled at Slade (mark II) in those dark, depressing months when he took us back to the brink of non-League was that he wouldn't work with what he'd bought, and further new signings seemed his only solution.

Do extra players really create competition for places, or do they demotivate people? It's said with such assurance and ease, but not all competition is healthy.

Injuries are unfortunate, and it's only right that managers seek replacements to cover that loss. But stockpiling is becoming endemic at all levels now. One player gets injured for a couple of weeks and next thing you know some 19-year-old from a sanitised top-flight academy is drafted in for the entire season. A player's form takes a dip — bam! Some 23-year-old who was once on the books of Man City a decade ago is signed on a free and given a 12-month deal.

Football is in the grip of a panic that just won't ease. Players are spending whole seasons sitting on benches. Yes, we need a squad, we need healthy competition, and we need to cover injuries, but the loan system is no longer fit for purpose. Its nature has shifted to benefit the few, to serve the elite, and so managers sign players for whole seasons, knowing full well they might not even see the light of day.

The closing of the transfer window is a manufactured moment in time that induces fear and panic in football managers. They say you can't tell how a league is unfolding until everyone's played ten games, yet just five games in and they're all scrambling for signatures when those five games haven't quite gone to plan. Well, which is it, lads?

Sometimes, I just wish more managers would work with what they've got — you know, the squads they signed — before they go off and sign some more. If Vernam hasn't been the answer so far, he could be the answer this Saturday with a tweak to the system, some specific drills or even a few chosen words.

But that's easy for me to say. Fans deal in hindsight. It's a currency that has no exchange rate, while managers like Hurst are left to answer questions only the unqualified ask. We have an unfair advantage, and I'm quite possibly being unfair.

So yeah, I might not always agree with Hurst's decisions, but he'll always have my sympathy — and trust (as long as he doesn't do that thing where he says we played better in defeat than we did in victory; fans see through that very easily, and tire of it very quickly).