Cod Almighty | Diary
The Bogle bogey ploy of Company C
10 April 2026
Call me perverse, but I've already found a quiet satisfaction if we don't make the play-offs this year. Falling short this year will feel like we get to see and measure the progress over an unchanged setting across three full seasons. I find myself wanting the growth to continue unmolested by Burton, Peterborough and Plymouth. I'm not ready yet to renew the feelings of being the poor relation to Stockport and Luton.
Barring unforeseen calamities, we're on track to better every measurable statistic from last season: more wins, more goals scored, fewer conceded, leading to a swing in goal difference so big it would make Reform UK jealous. Above all, we will have more points; more than 70 of them, surely. We haven't had 70+ points in the EFL since 2006 and that was the first time since 1998. We've only exceeded 70 points twice in 35 years.
In the non-league years, we managed it six times, or all but one of the seven seasons we were down there. Seven seasons of being the big fish. It's nice to be the team everyone else is nervous to play. This is the paradox of ambition: we want to enjoy, so we want to play well and to win, but the more we win the harder it gets and the less we enjoy.
Clearly, this is a paucity of ambition, so please feel free to stop reading and give Cod Almighty the thumbs down on whatever social media platform you use. Boo, you've got no desire, no vision, no ambition! And maybe you'd be right; 35 years is a long time without winning consistently. Maybe I've simply adjusted my ambitions. Maybe I'm not perverse.
Maybe it's been too long since our last stint in the second tier and the annual aim of 50 points. Or the memories of recent failure are still too near. Today is the five-year anniversary of Stefan Payne's sending off at Bradford. Remember how he headbutted his teammate at the halftime whistle? Remember how we've had to grit our teeth through failure after failure? Has that made me acquiescent? Has that made me scared?
This safe space, this little bit of fearlessness that exists in 8th to 10th place in League Two, is a comfort blanket and it's warm and it's soft and it's secure. Why would we stick our toes out from beneath it? Why reach too far? The money alone is reason enough to hide. Losses in League One averaged over £8 million last season.
But I bristled at Chairman Fenty's insistence that 50 points was success at this level. I did not enjoy Hurst's insistence of 61 points for an 11th-place finish in 2023 being something to celebrate or Artell pointing out the same thing last year with 67 points in 9th. Comfort blankets get stuffy.
If we miss out, I won't complain loudly; quiet satisfaction will still be there. But I do want more. We want more. We're ready for more. We want the progress to be challenged by Burton, Peterborough and Plymouth. We're ready to remind Stockport and Luton who the poor relations are.
Crewe tomorrow. Bogle will be back, warming their bench and ready to make his mark. Blundell Park will shake off its Harrogate haze and be ready to cheer on the team in a proper six-pointer. Artell had the easiest pre-match interview ever and was allowed to tell us precisely nothing about what to expect from the Mariners in terms of line-up. Your A46 Diary is always happy to have a guess: the Thai terror might be due a start. Cook owes us a goal or two, so will have to feature. Svanthorsson may get more minutes. Lavelle could be a temptation to give Kacurri a rest. Sweeney needs another go – we're a better side when he plays. Let Kabia do what he likes and get the ball to him as often as possible. Or try him on the right and risk a start for Svanthorsson on the left? Sounds like a plan.
We'd had an excellent record against Artell's old team until that defeat in December, winning the previous five League Two meetings and only conceding one goal. We are the bogies for their fevered noses, and we want that last play-off spot. So, hankies at the ready Railwaymen, we're coming to knock your own play-off push off the tracks.