Cod Almighty | Diary

Do you want it? Well, do you?!

27 March 2025

The brain-dead expression ‘wanting it more’ has seeped into the modern football lexicon via the drivel that bubbles out of the overactive mouths of media-savvy pundits. You’ve seen them on the telly, sitting there, saying things. In a shirt. All soundbite, no substance, that’s what it is.

It frustrates your West Yorkshire Diary when a striker, who simply happened to be standing in exactly the right place when the ball unexpectedly rebounded off a post, taps it in from two yards out and gets credited for having a goalscoring desire that outstrips that of an opposition’s desire to clear it from danger.

I’ve long held the belief that in this Gogglebox era, where everything you see on a screen is growing increasingly judgy of things happening on other screens, there is time and space for a show where football fans analyse the analysts. Punditry of football pundits would be quite fun, I think. Then we’d be able to measure what one week they consider a penalty, a dive, or a red card against standards they set weeks before and highlight how they are just as guilty of inconsistency as the players and referees they lambast from the safety of their insulated studio.

Every striker wants to score. Every defender wants to defend. The expression ‘wanting it more’ reflects the lowering standards and a growing inability to articulate or even commit time to caring about the nuances that may have led to a tap-in. Pundits will argue the quality of football has never been higher, and the availability of data has never run deeper. But the standard of punditry, given it has the entire history of the sport at its fingertips, has never been lower.

They talk like politicians who know they have a comfortable majority. Safe from their career of being judged, they now judge others. As with politics, the football media controls the narrative. If it applies enough pressure, amplifying the sections of support it chooses, it can affect the game and the way it’s governed. Those who speak about it, have a responsibility to look after it. They need to look further and think deeper about what it is they’re saying, rather than rambling on incorrigibly and relying on their personality to cover up their verbal diarrhoea.

The Mariners missed a glorious chance to climb into the play-offs when we fell to defeat at home to Notts County a couple of weeks ago. We had a second chance at home to Salford, and again we slipped up. Remarkably, we were given a third chance to haul ourselves into the top seven last Saturday, which we grasped with both hands, and feet… and, well, all body parts, really.

Tomorrow night’s match at Colchester is what my dad would call a biggie. Having nudged themselves into the play-offs at Crewe’s expense the week before last, Colchester immediately fell out of it when they ran into Bradford just as they’d taken up the helm aboard HMS Piss The League. The Bantams want the title more than Walsall, that’s what it is.

The home game against Colchester was bloody awful, wasn’t it? We were stuck in a rut at Blundell Park back then, and the U’s hadn’t won away all season, and the weather was damp, and it was cold, and after a dull first half we got worse and somehow found a way to lose a nil-nil. It’s the blueprint for games against the Cowleys. Town were equally flaccid against Braintree three times in one season — but it didn’t stop us winning promotion at the end of it, did it?

UTM!