Cod Almighty | Diary

All the pieces matter

4 September 2023

Miss Guest Diary writes: It's good to head into a new week with three points in the bag and a satisfactory Town performance to reflect upon. There were signs of the players coming together as a team in the second half at Walsall the previous Saturday, but against Gillingham at the weekend they sustained it for the whole game and were rewarded with a win and another clean sheet.

Which is just as well with two challenging away games at Bradford and then Wrexham coming up. I have never seen Town get anything better than a draw at Bradford – but then, as the cliché goes, there's always a first time. After all, we did take a first half lead against them at Valley Parade in April – a match which came after a gruelling run of nine games in 28 days for Town, including trips to Southampton and Brighton in the FA Cup. By comparison Bradford had played only five games in that period, so it was no surprise Town ran out of steam in the second half. Who knows, with the playing field a little more level and the team currently on song, we could secure a point or maybe even all three.

I was amused by some of the gloomy predictions I saw on Twitter when Town failed to sign anyone new on transfer deadline day. As Chairman Wow reminded fans, twelve new players have been signed since June bringing the squad up to a total of 23 senior players, plus four youngsters. When I first started watching Town in the early 90s more or less the same team played every week. So, out of interest, I looked back in the records and discovered that in the promotion seasons of 1989/90 and 1990/91 Alan Buckley used only fifteen players. Sometimes less really is more.

Here's something to cheer up the doom mongers. Wrexham announced that they had signed striker Luke Armstrong from Harrogate for an undisclosed club-record fee – rumoured to be half a million pounds – only for them to have to retract the statement when the signing was rejected by the EFL because their paperwork wasn't in order. This faux pas was made doubly amusing by the fact that the former chief executive of the EFL, Shaun Harvey, is an adviser to Wrexham's board of directors. Thank goodness Town don't have such prestigious 'advisers'.

Moving away from the on-pitch action, it was really lovely to see comments from Gillingham fans praising the away fan experience at Blundell Park, including a clip of the away bar and of a young Gills fan acting as a pre-match flag bearer. The upbeat, friendly responses and comments from Town fans really warmed my heart. But then, at the same time as I am wishing social media could be more like that and less of people criticising the players and calling for the manager's head, the cynic in me is reflecting that it's easy to be nice to opposition fans when Town have taken all three points off them.

You never know, one day we may get to be nice to the Bantams. See you in Bradford.

UTM