Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 13 July 2004

13 July 2004

"We are looking to bring in another five players," is Noddy's exciting announcement for Tuesday, and one of them could be 22-year-old former Port Vale midfielder Mark Boyd. A former Newcastle trainee, the player spent two seasons in the Potteries before leaving for hometown club Carlisle on a short-term deal late last season amid talk of "personal problems" (presumably not the kind Pele could help with). Vale fans' opinions on Boyd generally appear to be polarised between "technically gifted, bags of potential, could do well, never quite worked out for him here" and "crap". Boyd told the Cumberland News on Monday: "I'm talking to Grimsby today and I'll probably train with them with the possibility of a move" - a story repeated in the 'What the papers say' section of Town's official site, in its characteristic shoulder-shrugging, 'why do you expect us to know what's going on at the club?' way. Well, they could always find out from the Grimsby Telegraph, where Russ has been saying: "I haven't heard from [Boyd] and haven't got in touch myself - there's no truth in the link." And I wish I'd read that before I started writing this paragraph.

Meanwhile Carlos Garrocho and Michael Warwick are the players Slade has randomly selected from the Chammy Manager database today to invite for a try-out at Blundell Park, bringing to a frankly terrifying 13 the total number of trialists currently crashing on the floor of Russ's spare room. Garrocho, a midfielder from Angola, apparently made a handful of appearances for Walsall in the 2001-02 season, but it's kind of a baby's hand really; while Warwick - who doesn't even have an entry on Soccerbase, damn it - seems to be some kind of left-sided midfielder/defender who came through the ranks at Bolton and Stoke and once made it into the Israel under-17 squad. This would never have happened under Lawrie Mac.