Cod Almighty | Diary

Nuance is not allowed

24 February 2020

Ever since 6pm on Saturday, Cod Almighty Towers has been a hive of intensive research. Now Domestic Diary can reveal the results: Grimsby Town did occasionally lose matches under Bill Shankly, Lawrie McMenemy, George Kerr, and Alan Buckley. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that at least some of those managers were sometimes a bit rude.

That doesn't mean it is welcome. I'd hate to have any dealings with the children of those who have been saying Ian Holloway's bluster at John Tondeur in the post-Swindon interview was good because it demonstrated "passion." Presumably when their kids are bawling and beating their fists on the supermarket floor they applaud: "You can tell the little feller really wants that extra ride on the fire engine, can't you?" (I'm pretty sure I nicked that line from Harry Pearson.) But it doesn't make it the end of the world either.

Over the last two months, Town's results and performances prove that Ian Holloway is "A GOOD THING". But he has his flaws. One of those is a tendency to hide behind his Ollie persona - answering a question about the impact of the weather on a performance with a little speech about climate change, for instance - when he is being asked... not particularly difficult questions.  

In fact, my main beef with Saturday's little flare-up is that, in the interests of research, I felt obliged to read through the whole Fishy thread on the issue. I'd been led to expect the apocalypse. It was actually just one set of posters suggesting that Holloway ought to apologise to Tondeur, then another lot of posters - the sort who behave like the paramilitary wing of the Liberal Democratic Party - accusing the first set of demanding that Holloway be sacked.

I do also have an issue with the posters who tried to push the blame onto Tondeur, accusing him of asking the same banal questions week after week. Now obviously at Cod Almighty, we avoid cliches like the plague, but sometimes the reason phrases - or questions for that matter - get overused is because they are the right ones. What else are you meant to ask a football manager after a defeat than why they lost, what he thought of the performance, whether there are any injuries, and preparations for the next match. Less than an hour after a defeat is hardly the time for an in-depth discussion on the role of the wing back in the modern game. Imagine if JT had asked a follow-up question on the ozone layer?

Perhaps Holloway's reaction was his way of suggesting there was nothing more to say. And perhaps he is right.