Cod Almighty | Diary

What's the frequency, David?

3 April 2025

Before the day dawns your Guest Diarist has awoken, altarwise by owl light, to pick over the bones of footballing christianity. We are all still trying to forget the night that the darkness doubled, when lightning struck itself aren't we? No? Well re-live it here with Tony's match report.

When the idiot who was charged with ruining the game signalled ten more minutes of torture my mental hope meter should have soared, skewed upwards by memories of thrilling last minute goals scored in the past. But the meter stayed sullenly stuck. Tonight was so obviously pre-ordained, we could not ascend to the next level, we were stuck in purgatory. The players left to die on the diamond, the fans scattered for the turnstiles. Whether you take your comfort from Dylan Thomas or Neil Young or get your kicks under a marquee moon there was only one thing to do - go home and wait for Mr Artell to explain himself.

Faced with a complete absence of strikers (apparently even the kiddie strikers had come out in injured solidarity with their seniors) Mr Artell resisted the temptation to put three fit names in a hat and draw one of them to play up top. Instead he performed surgery on the whole team and abandoned the format which had garnered so many points, reverting to a back four and muddling the midfield. As my regular reader knows I am completely unqualified to judge such matters. I accept that just watching football week in week out does not make you au fait with what is actually going on in any game. But, faced with a depleted squad, a tight away game and with the league table where it was, setting up to avoid defeat would have seemed a common sense solution.

But, hey, we controlled the game, we made chances, just those two pesky goals conceded spoiled it. It's a good job we have learned to love David Artell. But sometimes I wish he'd stop twiddling the dial. See yer.