Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 4 January 2025

Division 4

Bradford City 3 Richards (45+1), Smallwood (48 pen), Pattison (69)

Grimsby Town 1 McJannet (51)

Attendance: 18,011 (2,187 away fans)

Blameless for the lightweight, light blue lameness in front of him, the diver Jordan at least kept the score down in the first half. Plunging high and low, blocking and rocking this was proper goalkeeping. C'mon, give him a little love, when he deserves it. He deserved it and deserved better.

Say what you see: Hume, Warren, Svanthorsson, Davies, Khouri and Barrington were weak or wretched, ineffective or invisible, but the most guilty party was Gorgeous George who just looked like a surly 12-year old forced to comb his hair and wear a shirt and tie when goes to his Auntie Julie's for Christmas.

After the obligatory statement about not wanting to talk about excuses but…today, Matthew, Town shall not be performing because of tiredness in a small injury-hit squad. The facts were left to speak for themselves as shoulders almost shrugged:

"We didn't do much right…It was a performance where you get what you deserve"

You know Town are scraping around the bottom of the barrel when Satnav Dave can't even be bothered to moan about the ref:

"He's done what Danny Rose would do, he's fallen on the floor and hoped the ref gives it."

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Remember, we listen to ex–Scunny managers so you don't have to. The Old Iron talked about his treat and summed it neat:

"We were relentless, today a completely dominant performance. It comes down to heart and desire. There's a lot of fitness in the mind and if you allow it (to) it can make you feel tired."

Not for the first time the opposition manager simply lays it all out: Why Town Failed.

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This was Swindon. This was every winter Blunderland performance last year. This was the past in the present where no blue shirt was really present in the moment.

Town were bullied and treated with contempt as if the scales had fallen from Bantam eyes as the curtain had dropped to reveal not wizards, but wretched waifs wandering listlessly across the earth in search of shelter.

Long balls, short balls? It was all just balls, Dave.

The switch to "our" football after 15 minutes just made things worse as Town boxed themselves into corners and were simply shoved aside and became mere playthings for the promenading Marooners.

There is no positive data to extract here beyond Wright making some actual, factual saves and Luker looking like a professional footballer, one that at least matched Bantamweighters for art and graft. It was nice to find one, eventually, in the lucky blue shirt.

Twenty one games, three more wins. Is it too much to ask?

There is absolutely nothing subtle or magnificent about the current Bantamweights. In a normal season this current bunch of coconuts are a bog-standard fourth tier play-off team. Beefy blokes, big booming balls from side to side, balls in the box. Run hard, play hard, be hard.

That's it, that is all there is to them, that's all they needed. Alexander's artisanal cheesemakers spent an afternoon chipping away at a crumbling, patched-up sea wall. And when it collapsed they flooded forward destroying many a pot plant on the way.

They had the ruthless gumption to see a weakling and pounced upon it, like a raggedy old lion seeking a suppertime treat wandering over the hills unseen into Watership Down. Mmm, tasty.

One year they'll fail to fail to go up. They've as good a chance as anyone in their weird league.

Most tried in trying circumstances, then most tried to beat the traffic. We're tired, so tired, tired of waiting when Town are in blue.

Mr E Bell

This farcical, fallible fig leaf was sometimes right, mostly wrong, always uncertain. What a masterclass in cowardly decision making.

Penalty, schmenalty!

It was all the little things that don't get reported, that get edited out of highlights, that all added up to a hill of beans on toast. Booking Pattison for complaining about a free kick he hadn't given to Town, then giving the free kick to Town was hilarious in isolation, but merely one isolated example of his mad, sad lunchtime stroll through the canyons of his own mind to the wardrobe of his soul in the section labelled shirts: 4.893

Soggy Yorkshire puddings for lunch.

In a word: wretched