Cod Almighty | Diary

Look at 'im with his sausage roll thumb

2 August 2024

Due to a personnel crisis at Cod Almighty Enterprises, they have had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for a diarist, and as a result BOTB is briefly back. Sorry about that.

So what is soccer’s least well informed man going to be yapping about today? Well, Pepsi Electric for a start. At the Tuesday night friendly Mr Retro Diary was tasked with obtaining a Diet Pepsi for yours truly at half-time. A simple enough thing you would imagine. But no. He was informed that they had no Diet Pepsi, but did have something called Pepsi Electric. Presumably something modern and politically correct introduced by our woke, lefty, Guardianista, communist, Corbynite leaders, Pepsi Electric is a blue drink that tastes of detergent and tears. Confusingly it doesn’t resemble anything like Pepsi or any other soft drink known to man. After a few mouthfuls I began to wonder if it was some kind of lubrication for electric car engines, pondering the possibility of Retro Diary having accidentally gone to Halfords and not the refreshment kiosk. Luckily it bestowed several superpowers upon my person such as the ability to perform an Alan Pouton stepover with my own cat. (Unluckily one of the superpowers wasn’t writing so there is more of nonsense to come.) Sort it Stockwells and Starmer. We want our country back, with its diet pepsi, friendly bobbies on the beat we could throw bricks at and good old British murderers like Jack the Ripper.

As a John Shuttleworth fan I’m unable to say the word ‘Rotherham’ without singing ‘Relatives in Rotherham, we very rarely bother ‘em’ so from now on I’ll refer to them by their preferred nickname, the Lisping Policemen. (Rothers, you see, Rozzers. Lisp. Never mind.) On Tuesday I was able to watch the mighty stripes play the Lispers, my first taste of pain and disappointment – sorry, seeing the team in action – of the bright spanking new season. Actually, ignore that, I thought we did well. Pre-season tends to be a right load of old nonsense and I never take it that seriously, but I suppose it’s better to look any good than it is to be a shambolic mess. I felt a bit sorry for Donovan Wilson, who spent the game up front by himself with a huge Lispers centre half using him as his own personal climbing frame whilst the referee looked on like an indulgent uncle. We nearly gave away a goal by pissing about at the back, natch, and they managed to miss two of the openest open goals since open goals were invented, but a late equaliser sent us into the eerie closed off quiet streets with a smidgin of hope, a quality noticeable absent thus far.

We could obviously do with more forwards, as some of us may have mentioned before a few times, but we have a whole eight days to get them in and get them up to speed, so like, don’t panic, okay, stress ball? Who needs strikers anyway? You're so out of date with modern footballing philosophy. Its all about possession now, because football matches are decided on how many passes each team has in its own half, a change in the rules some fans have been slow to cotton on to. 

Mansfield at home tomorrow. We could be good, we could be bad. It don't matter none. 

And then it begins.