Cod Almighty | Diary

You'd better run all day, and run all night

24 September 2025

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm starting to enjoy David Artell's post-match interviews. 

In the early days of his reign he sounded like a hungover bus driver trying to explain to his partner why he got home at three in the morning when he said he was only nipping out to the newsagent. This wasn't helped, of course, by some astoundingly bad results which were hardly conducive to upbeat chirpiness. But increasing success on the pitch seems to have given him, if not fluidity, at least the bravery to occasionally try to say something interesting or amusing. After the Barnet Horror he casually threw in the word 'multi-factorial' as though he was the football management equivalent of Stephen Fry. Remarkable progress.

Even better was the way he responded to Matt Dean's tactical queries with the repeated assertion that the players didn't "run about enough". Having watched the game on my Completely Legal Official Football Website From Kingdom of Kazakhstan, what he said was inescapably true. You can't do a ferocious press without running about, you can't hit teams on the break without running about and you can't mark opponents who are running about without running about. The number of times we had a throw-in and the taker had to wait ten minutes until a player actually tried to create some space was infuriating. Run about a bit! Of course, the ineptness of our performance led to a dissection of the players, the management and the tactics on The Fishy website, but not a single poster pointed out that we needed to run about a bit more. Sometimes football isn't as complicated as people make it out to be. Just run about a bit more and things will happen.

Tonight is, of course, the night we discover our next opponents in the Haribo Cup, and because I'm from NE Lincolnshire I'm willing to stake my entire house on it being Someone Shit Away. Of course, my genetically predisposed pessimism has so far proven groundless with Shrewsbury at home, Man Utd at home and Sheffield Wednesday away. Someone not from Grimsby would take this as evidence that we are on a lucky streak and the football gods are smiling upon us, whereas it just makes me think that Someone Shit Away is becoming more likely by the moment.

At least, whoever it is, we won't be playing them for a month or so, meaning we can run about a bit more in the league for a while without distraction. Many have pointed out that our two defeats this season in the league have both come shortly after glorious cup victories, and it seems to me entirely possible that the players' failure to run about a bit has been related to their earlier exertions, not least in their after-match celebrations, which were exhausting to watch.  

This theory will be put to the test when we play league propper-uppers Cheltenham this Saturday after a big, lovely, juicy week off. If we don't run about a bit in this one there may be deeper problems at the club. Fingers crossed, eh? They have sacked their manager. Rightio. OK. Hmmm. I don't like it.

Afore I go, a quick mention of two remarkable things from Tony Butcher's summary of the Barnet Horror on this very site. Firstly, opposition manager Dean Brennon was very polite, even complimentary about us. Secondly the referee scored over eight out of ten. I'm not sure how to cope with this unprecedented double whammy, so, in confusion, I'm going to go out into the garden and run about a bit.

Goodbye.