D3D4 Grimsby Correspondent Sam Barrick looks back over an up and down season for The Mariners…
Consistently Inconsistent
The unpredictability of Grimsby’s Town inaugural season on our return to the Football League has become somewhat predictable. We win one week at Plymouth and lose at Crawley the next. We win at Cambridge we then lose at home to Cheltenham. However, most fans this time last season, having just lost 1-0 at home to the mighty Braintree in the Conference play-offs, would have bitten your arm off to be comfortably in 14th position in League 2 this season. We all hoped for promotion but we are all perfectly content with a solid season on our return.
The close season didn’t get off to a great start. Despite the massive achievement of finally winning promotion back to the league, only 2 out the 7 players offered new contracts accepted them and that left us with just 5 players from the promotion season in our squad this season. What infuriated Town fans in particular was the fact we lost top scorer Padraig Amond and promising and athletic centre half Toto Nsiala to the footballing hotbed of Hartlepool. We wondered if we had been mean with our offers or something peculiar was happening, the loss of Amond was particularly grating as he had spoken about building for a league 1 push. We were perhaps naive in believing the rubbish we hear interviews, it was probably just wishful thinking.
Nonetheless, we signed a number of promising players. Zak Mills and Danny Andrew look like excellent full backs and that was clear from their first appearance. It was evident that Hurst’s shrewdness in the transfer market was still functional in the league. Plus we signed a number of promising flair players such as Kayden Jackson and Rhys Browne, both of whom struggled to set the world alight but Browne has never really been given an opportunity. As always there were some solid journeymen amongst the signings. Luke Summerfield, James Berrett and Ashley Chambers had all been relegated from the league the previous season and Summerfield and Berrett in particular have received bad criticism from fans. Whatever the circumstances though, we were all going to be pumped and ready to go for the start of the new season in the league.
We started the season with a 2-0 win against Morecambe, where Kayden Jackson and Ben Davies looked like world beaters. How deceptive can a debut be? We looked organised, united and threatening and this perhaps lured us into a false sense of security. Four consecutive defeats followed in all competitions but then a magnificent 5-2 home success against Stevenage, with a quite brilliant performance from Omar Bogle, showed that we meant business. We then dropped 2 points at Notts County after being 2-0 up and cruising, so in true Town fashion we blew a 2-0 lead with 15 minutes to go. All 2743 of us still left the ground happy with our start to the season. We went one better the next week when Bogle once again inspired a 2-1 win at then league leaders Luton. An all-round excellent display showed we were getting to grips with the football league again.
We then mastered the art of the clean sheet in September and when Hurst, who had assembled a very dogged, determined and hard working side, left for what he perceived as better things at Shrewsbury we were sitting in 7th place in the table with the league’s best striker in our ranks. Hurst’s last game was somewhat unceremonious; a 0-1 home defeat to a poor Cheltenham side was a sad way for an ultimately successful Town manager to end his tenure.
We brought in Marcus Bignot, a young, vibrant, exciting and charismatic manager. Lots of fans had been begging for someone like this, someone who would engage fans and really get a feel good factor circulating Cleethorpes. His tenure started with an exciting 2-2 draw with Barnet, only an awful Omar Bogle penalty prevented the win. We ultimately went and completed our best day of the season the following week at Plymouth though with a 3-0 dismantling of the league’s runaway leaders who were unbeaten in 14 filling us with unwarranted expectations and dreams. As I said we have been consistently inconsistent. After a spirited 2-2 draw against Carlisle we then performed dreadfully at Crawley, losing 3-2, despite Omar Bogle’s spectacular goal. Even then though, the Bignot era looked promising. We then lost to Pompey and Donny courtesy of 2 brilliant free kicks. However, we began to look toothless up front. Pompey nullified Bogle brilliantly and we weren’t capable of trying something different. After Bogle was injured against Donny, we looked clueless and bereft of ideas on how to play without him. The first rumblings of discontent among Town fans appeared but they were soon quashed after we won brilliantly at Carlisle on January 2nd after being behind at half time. Bogle, once again grabbing the headlines as we completed an emphatic second half which yielded a 3-1 win. We were indebted to our goalkeeper though. Dean Henderson, a precocious Manchester United prodigy who looked far too good for us. He made world class saves and caught crosses commandingly. It was all too good to be true.
And, with this being Grimsby Town it was. The transfer window was one of the most frenetic and intense windows most Town fans have witnessed. We signed 8 players, debatably only 4 have really been successful. Jamey Osborne and Sam Jones look like high quality additions; both are young, dynamic and energetic players who have improved as the year’s gone on and as they’ve got to grips with full time League 2 football. Chris Clements can get a goal and play a long pass but hasn’t shown anything like enough consistency to warrant replacing Summerfield and Berrett who were solid and dependable midfielders. Calum Dyson has shown moments of brilliance but they have occurred about 3 times in 16 appearances, he’s young and raw and will probably develop. Akwasi Asante, Luke Maxwell, Gavin Gunning and Adi Yussuf have all baffled the fans. Gunning’s continued selection in holding midfield despite the fact we have 6 or 7 genuine midfielders has been particularly confusing. Maxwell and Yussuf have barely featured and Asante has been injured. Yussuf and Asante have looked handy when on the pitch but their prolonged absences made fans question their overall usefulness to the squad. We all understood Bignot’s ambition to make his mark on the club and his continued sentiment to bring in technicality and physicality but we spent an awful lot of money on players and only 2 have been genuine successes. Mr Fenty agreed with us but more of that later.
The biggest events of the window were both outgoings though. Firstly, having secured his services until the end of the season, Dean Henderson was recalled by Manchester United and left us in a precarious position. James McKeown, our goalkeeper of 6 years and over 600 appearances had come on the radio and expressed his intention to leave publically, citing Bignot’s decision to pick Henderson over him. McKeown felt aggrieved, he lacked discretion and left the whole club looking shambolic. Fans started to question whether Bignot was the real deal as he then came out and denied he’d told McKeown that he’d not play again. After McKeown failed to force through a move to work with his old mate Hurst at Shrewsbury and after Henderson’s recall he was reinstalled to the team and saved a penalty in the last minute after his reselection. This marked a truly remarkable end to a tumultuous week.
Deadline day also saw the departure of Omar Bogle for a reported 6 figure sum to Wigan. The move had been expected but once we got to the deadline and with total radio silence we all wrongly assumed that he’d be staying until the end of the season. His 19 goals would be difficult to replace and with Henderson also departed and the memory of Doncaster away without Omar, we all feared the worst. However, we continued in a similar way to how it was before, with one exception we had developed a taste for the hammering. Losing 4-0 at Portsmouth, 5-0 at Crewe and 5-1 at home to Doncaster! It didn’t go down well and people started to question Bignot’s competence. As previously stated he continued selection of Gavin Gunning was particularly perplexing. He messed about with systems and played 35 year old Ben Davies in the notoriously energy draining and enduring task of playing right wing back, no one was surprised when he was hopelessly exposed at Crewe. There were a few glimpses of promise, a comprehensive 3-0 victory over Mansfield including a stunner from Calum Dyson and Steve Evans being sent to the stands was by far the best home day of the season.
People genuinely started questioning Bignot after the 5-1 home defeat to Doncaster when fans criticised Bignot picking Gunning and Boyce over Collins and Pearson at centre half and playing 2 central midfielders out wide. We were always going to get hammered; we didn’t know what we were doing against the best team in the league, with John Marquis absolutely on fire. Also after going 3-1 behind we should have decided to shut up shop and keep it tight, we went hell for leather and the consequences were disastrous.
The 3-1 win at Blackpool the following week was great for the 1500 travelling Town fans who got to see a great and unexpected victory. However, it merely papered over the cracks. Bignot was dismissed, somewhat ruthlessly, by a previously indecisive John Fenty amid rumours of players not signing new deals if he stayed in charge and indiscipline at the training ground! All this made Town fans question whether Bignot did have a handle on things in the first place.
The second era of Russell Slade started as the Bignot one finished, consistently inconsistent. We beat play off chasing Cambridge, lost at relegation threatened Cheltenham, beat Yeovil, lost at Barnet and held title hopefuls Plymouth. We looked very good in the home games and decidedly ordinary in the away games, highlighting the necessity to invest in the squad and give ourselves some different options for specific opponents. Bignot had got rid of all but one wide man as he was under pressure to reduce the squad size and Chambers and Browne were willing to go. What is clear is that despite having three different managers, each with their own distinctive style, the side remained inconsistent.
One of the highlights of the season occurred at Barnet of the last away day of the season when we as fans, angered by Barnet’s banning of inflatables, due to the conviction of Town fan for assaulting a steward with an inflatable shark after a memorable last minute winner by Craig Disley in 2015, raised £1000 to hire a Mariachi Band to play at the game, I didn’t go to Barnet but I have been informed that they were brilliant and provided a really good end to the season, despite the depressing on field performance. It was a great way to end a very good return to the football league after so many years in the wilderness.
After the end of the season, Town fans were sad to hear that non-league stalwart Craig Disley would not be offered a new contract, it was greeted with mainly acceptance but it was still extremely difficult to see the best midfielder by some distance for 15 years walk away from the club. Thankfully John Fenty confirmed there will be a testimonial for Disley to celebrate his achievements with the club. Then came the more surprising news that Shaun Pearson would not be offered a new deal, as it was rumoured the club and player were miles apart in terms of expectations for what a new deal would look like. Pearson has since signed a 2 year contract at Wrexham and I am surprised that he didn’t get a league club.
All in all, an eventful return to the football league, I am worried that having spent the previous year tearing the heart out of the club we don’t go back to journeymen. We started firstly in the summer with Nathan Arnold and Toto Nsiala leaving, two players who suffered the defeat against Bristol Rovers a year before were offered more money elsewhere. Paul Hurst was driven out of the club by fans who never really liked him even when got us promoted. Then Bignot coming in and freezing Josh Gowling and more notably Craig Disley out of the first team picture. Finally Disley and Pearson were released and now there is only James McKeown left from the non-league side, and even he wanted out in January. We don’t need journeymen and it was a key part of Hurst’s recruitment that allowed him to put together a promotion squad, galvanised and determined. Now that has gone, let’s hope Slade has better players lined up to get us promoted and push on to League One.
Words Sam Barrick
It was great just to see Grimsby back in the Football League and with Lincoln being promoted now as well, there is the small mater of the derby game to look forward to. As for Bogle, the writing was on the wall with that one but it will be interesting to see who Slade brings in as a replacement…