Cod Almighty | Match Stats

Saturday 17 February 2018

Division 4

Cambridge United 3 Ikpeazu (19), Waters (67), Maris (71)

Grimsby Town 1 Hooper (pen, 90)

Attendance: 4739 (797 away fans)

Zak! Mills had an excellent game as a lithe and lolloping libero - as long as the ball wasn't kicked above his head. He'd have been man of the match in a five-a-side tournament. Ah, but our willing willowy wing-back only ran out of puff after the third went in. Reece Hall-Johnson was Town's doughtiest defender and most aggressive attacker.

Poor old Wilkie, plunging into a cesspool without a snorkel and using clichés number 1,2, 3 and 4 in 'The Little Book of Trite – a handy guide for making five minutes of noise' that all managers are issued with by the LMA:
"It was a disappointing result. I thought we started the game quite well actually. We started brightly and…"
You know the rest of this guffery off by heart.

We're disappointed, John. But at least Wilkie means it when he says it hurts, John. Some fools fool themselves but for Wilkie, love hurts.

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So he wasn't just standing on the side watching the wheels go round and round. Might-be manager Joe Dunne showcased his tactical credentials with a look at me I know what I’m doing aside:
"We picked an attacking team but their system caught us on the hop a touch…we had to just shuffle things around at half time and give them one or two instructions and I think the shape was good in the second half."

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Town never looked like scoring against an equally dreary set of scufflers and shufflers. Hey, that’s every game this season.

Town's back three functioned marvellously, until Cambridge realised all they had to do was welly it high down the middle and over Mills' head. No-one really looked like they knew what to do when there was an opponent disrupting what they'd been practicing. It was like watching the second pre-season game against some team from the Northern Premier League, on a Tuesday night in field beside an abandoned coal mine.

Don't mention Matt. Ooh, the language would make a fisherman flush his privy.

We said goodbye with a highball, and for the sentimental verse and with nothing left in Fenty's purse, thanks for those memories Slade. You've left your successor with a mortuary pass.

The amber amblers were utterly useless, veering between unexceptional and unprofessional, and without doubt the second worst team on the pitch.

Ikpeazu was nothing if not persistent. His physical presence and the adherence to Boyle Law were enough to dissolve Town's shifting sandbanks. The rest? Pfft. Vapid.

They'll accidentally survive because the division is terrible. The Amberites just had a little more oom-pa-pa in front of goal when they dropped by.

We're not little children and we know what we want.

Dean Whitestone

The lovely limester was most wonderfully excellent, ignoring the half-hearted homester harrumphing and giving the travelling Townites a little present at the end. He looked up at the massed moroseness and saw people crying on the inside. That man had a heart: 9.738

Same players, same end product. It.s the same old story.

In a word: flotsam