The hole in our squad was letting in Waters

No game to reflect on this week because we’re a tinpot club with no undersoil heating (and undersoil heating is dead expensive and not worth it for a non-league club). So, let’s have a pissboil about this week’s comings and goings, shall we?

(Microsoft Word keeps trying to correct ‘pissboil’ to ‘pissoir’. Shout out to French Latic Jonathan Williams, who tells me that ‘pissoir’ is the vulgar – you might say, obscene - version of urinoire. Cultured as fuck, us.)

The first announcement of the week was Jake Dennis arriving on loan from Cardiff for the rest of the season as cover for Mat Hudson and Scott Moloney. He’s 20, he’s played a couple of times for Wales U19s, and, barring injury, I’m guessing we won’t be seeing him play except maybe for in the National League Cup, so I can’t really be arsed saying any more about that. I don’t think that it means that Hudson is definitely leaving, but feel free to speculate.

On Wednesday we announced the signing of 34-year-old midfielder Corry Evans until the end of the season, after he left Bradford. I’m a middle-aged woman so I had no clue what the fuck the “Tap, hold and load in 4 minutes” tweet was all about, but thankfully young Lucy explained it to me, cheers Lucy. Corry is Jonny Evans’ brother, and it’s probably for the best if I don’t make any further comment about that. He’s got 69 (nice) caps for Northern Ireland, he made over 200 appearances at Blackburn, and Lee Johnson made him captain at Sunderland. Hopefully we’ll all be talking about what great experience he’s brought to the team, rather than what a crock he is.

In his interview, he talked about being impressed after training with us for a week: “the stadium’s great, the pitch is fantastic”. YOU HEAR THAT? THE PITCH IS FANTASTIC! EVEN WITHOUT UNDERSOIL HEATING! Mellon said that he “will help the group dramatically”, which conjured up slightly disturbing mental images of him performing a Shakespeare soliloquy or coaching the squad through pretending to be a tree.

On Thursday afternoon we confirmed the entirely expected signing of striker Billy Waters from Wrexham. Earlier in the week I did a bit of Google research on him and was absolutely delighted to see this surprising gem on his Wikipedia page:

And it’s true, as our announcement video showed, he is. Can’t wait to see him and Frank doing a duet at the promotion party.

He’s been a reasonable prolific striker during his career – it didn’t quite work out for him at Wrexham, sometimes it doesn’t, but they signed him off the back of him scoring 9 in 32 games at Barrow. His loan at Halifax this season was his second spell there, and he’s score 5 in 19 games for them this season, including one against us in the FA Cup, in a game when, let’s be brutally honest, Halifax were absolutely terrible. Some people are a little underwhelmed by him signing but judging by the replies to Halifax announcing the end of his loan with them, their fans are certainly sorry to see him go.

Mellon bigged him up saying “It’s a challenge to come here and play for us with what we demand of the players, this club needs to be higher up and Billy emulates our thinking”. Glad to hear it. Hopefully he gets (hahahahaha) ‘international’ clearance in time for today.

Yesterday, we got the news we were all slightly dreading. A clause in his contract has been triggered, and Sam Clucas has gone to his hometown club, Lincoln City, who are currently 12th in League One. We all knew it was coming, I don’t begrudge him it, and it’s been plainly obvious that he’s too good to be playing in the National League.

We can be angry that he’s left, and say that we never should have signed him on those terms, and feel aggrieved that he ‘used’ us to get match fit. Or we can accept that, massive as we might be, we’re a non-league club, players of his quality are only going to come to us with some kind of caveat, and isn’t it better to have had someone way too good for this level for nine games than none? Isn’t it better to have loved and lost, etc? If anyone should feel cheated, it’s Clucas. There was absolutely nothing wrong with those goals at Tranmere and Eastleigh. The Olimpico at Prenton Park, in particular, should have been one of the goals of the season.

We needed more new blood to pacify us after that loss, and pictures appeared on social media on Friday afternoon of what was clearly a new signing posing for photos on the pitch. I got a bit giddy because I thought it looked like Jonson Clarke-Harris; some of you got even giddier and said it looked like Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Positionally, you were closer with TAA. It was left-back Jake Leake, arriving on loan for the rest of the season from Hull. He’s been on loan at Tranmere this season and has previously played in the National League North for Boston and Scunthorpe (alongside Ogle, I’m guessing?). Likes to attack. Likes a long throw (and I know how much you all love those!).

It’s been an interesting year so far off the pitch. We’re all gutted to see Stones and Clucas leave, but if we’d broken the bank to keep them – and I’m not even sure we could have, because I’m pretty sure Clucas didn’t leave for the money – and not reinforced our midfield, we’d have been justified in complaining.

Can’t wait to get back to Boundary Park this afternoon. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed wearing two pairs of socks. I’ve missed hearing us celebrating a goal from the Rocky bar. And I’ve certainly missed having actual football to write about, because it’s harder work trying to come up with some shite to say without it.

Let’s hope we defend better against Aldershot today than we did at their place (ooh la laaaaa, that was awful) and Waters turns out to be the new Andy Ritchie. No pressure, son. KTMFF.

Written by Arlene Finnigan. Pictures © Oldham Athletic.