Cod Almighty | Diary
Re-make/Re-model
19 September 2024
Now then. I won't keep you long today because your Guest Diarist has three score of Durham Earlies to prick out and beetroot to pickle. Never sweeten it, gentle reader - sweetened shop beetroot is the spawn of the devil.
I started to worry about future team performance when the former chairman who is now head of vice talked often about developing Town's game model. Shaping a team like shaping a web business. To my old mind, whose past life running a software company seems so far ago that it must have been a dream, all this game theory seems a bit far-fetched and fantastical. It smacks of disgruntled West Ham fans being constantly disappointed to not see their team playing that elusive, mythical 'West Ham way'. The new-age Grimsby way is apparently risky but entertaining possession-based football. Fun Boy football - "it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it - that's what gets results!"
Mr Artell needs a couple of years to programme a team to play exactly to this game model. In the early times the fans get the odd glimpse of it working and we all go "I get it, wow!" But when the playing model glitches on the field and there is no time to reboot it the results look awful and everyone groans and looks embarrassed. In the old days if a key defender had to wait on the sidelines whilst a dangerous set piece is taken someone on the pitch would take charge and re-organise fast. There are so many variables in football that the game model becomes bigger than the brain can cope with. You need experienced leadership in those vital moments. To me, Town are lacking that.
But this weekend is not the time for fans to play the 'must win' card. Tough opening fixtures, key players still injured, the game model still in alpha testing and being debugged - still only mid-September. Come on people. I know we have been a bit shit lately, but we'll be better soon, honest! When the game model starts to work reliably (if it ever does) the football will look like this. I try not to retreat to the past for comfort but when it's the anniversary week of the best goal I ever saw at any level in 60 years of watching I allow myself that little indulgence. Now watch it again. See yer.