Cod Almighty | Diary

Would you sell a football club to this man?

12 September 2019

What fresh hell is this? Colin Dodd, a solicitor rebuffed in his attempts to buy Notts County, now appears to be interested in Grimsby Town. He has changed the name of the company he set up to buy County from Meadow Lane Project Limited to Blundell Park Project Limited.

Dodd's efforts to buy Notts County were hampered when it was discovered that one of his associates was Alex May. Under his previous identity of Alick Kapikanya, May was jailed in 2014 for his part in a scam, stealing the identities of elderly homeowners then remortgaging their homes. May, Dodd assured everyone, was only acting as an advisor to his group. Most reassuring. Nothing says you are the best person to take control of a community institution so much as having a convicted fraudster as your advisor.

The impression this gives is that he is desperate to take over a football club – any club – and develop the land around it. That failed at Notts County as the club doesn't own Meadow Lane. And if Dodd were to perform even a modicum of due diligence (reading Cod Almighty would be enough), it should be apparent that Blundell Park will hardly suit him either.

Dodd, in short, sounds like exactly the kind of person who John Fenty has said he will not sell the club to.

Fenty didn't quite take the chance to reiterate that yesterday, but he's a busy man. Perhaps he hasn't had the two minutes it takes to search "Colin Dodd Notts County" to dig out the Alex May association. He said only that he'd heard nothing from Dodd.

On the Shutes takeover, he treats us to a classic Fentyism:

"To make a deadline, as it stands, doesn't seem worth the hot air that you might subscribe to it. When all is said and done, we want to make less comment. What we have said before is in the public domain and is there for people to see. When there is a next step, we will be public about that and let the fans and wider public know."

Translated, that means that although John Fenty only sees himself as a custodian of a club in which we all have a stake, he also thinks we are all a bit too stupid to understand it, and resents the effort of keeping us informed.

Bye.