Altrincham.v.Torquay

[stefano]

In the bottom half, below teams like Dover, who have games in hand - it is just embarrassing. No doubt it will be because of the officials but more it is because we are just pretty dire. Is it the manager? I'm starting to wonder whether he is simply out of his depth.

Ah you have finally woken up and smelt the coffee. Only took 12 months!

Well if you say the manager has to go Hector, then he will just have to go, as I am sure you will be able to produce a wonderfully constructed diatribe of unrelated matters which will prove that he should never have been appointed in the first place. Hope you are also able to delete or hide your posts of 12 months ago. Could prove embarrassing otherwise!

Over to you then Hector. You are at your best when you are on the current 'Sack the Manager' campaign!

[Burnhamgull]

Not sure what the answer is but a good natural manager should be able to motivate any starting eleven. When the high earners leave and Hargreaves has his own squad will people then say that we have to give him a season for those players to settle.

Let's not keep skirting around the issue here. CH is clearly failing to motivate the players, he's clearly not coaching the players to play to a rigid system that gets results and he's clearly not keeping the lads discipline in order.

At what point do we realise that perhaps employing a club "legend" as manager was a silly decision?.......Wes Saunders anyone?

[hector]

Ah you have finally woken up and smelt the coffee. Only took 12 months!

Well if you say the manager has to go Hector, then he will just have to go, as I am sure you will be able to produce a wonderfully constructed diatribe of unrelated matters which will prove that he should never have been appointed in the first place. Hope you are also able to delete or hide your posts of 12 months ago. Could prove embarrassing otherwise!

Over to you then Hector. You are at your best when you are on the current 'Sack the Manager' campaign!

He was dealt a crappy hand by your mate Knill, which he is still having to contend with, but feel he should be doing better with the players he has, in this non-league division. Even if Hargreaves was to go, however, he has done a great deal better than the clown he replaced - which wasn't difficult, I suppose.

[Gloomy Gull]

Let's not keep skirting around the issue here. CH is clearly failing to motivate the players, he's clearly not coaching the players to play to a rigid system that gets results and he's clearly not keeping the lads discipline in order.

At what point do we realise that perhaps employing a club "legend" as manager was a silly decision?.......Wes Saunders anyone?

On the day of appointment

[nickbrod]

Why is anyone surprised at our current status? Surely no one expected promotion this season. With the reduced wage bill CH could only attract the type of player he has. Presumably it will be no different next season.
I've watched the 'mighty' Bristol Rovers draw 0-0 at a very workmanlike Woking this afternoon.
Basically nothing's guaranteed in football.
I've said all season we're not going to be promoted neither are we going to be relegated. A top ten finish would be good.
CH should be given another season to show his worth.

[Dave]

I did not expect promotion, what I did expect was for our squad to make a decent fist of it, and push for at least a play-off place. Our team are currently sat 22nd in the current form table, the only reason why we're not 24th and last is purely 'goal difference'

Alfreton have taken 10 pts from their last 6 games, Southport 8 pts from their 6 games, TUFC 3 pts. Right now we can thank our lucky stars we had a good start to the season, and be more thankful there probably isn't enough games left for us to be drawn into the relegation scrap, 10 th place, yep I'd grab that now if it was offered, sadly for me, my prediction that we'd finish 17th in the league is starting to haunt me.

[nickbrod]

After his booking today no Young for the next two matches.

[SBP]

Our squad is massively underachieving, 20pts below Barnet, 15pts below Rovers. Ridiculous. We should be play off places minimum. Briscoe is not fit, Cameron is so inconsistent its unbelievable, Chappell has quality but is off his best, Pearce should be the best defender in the league by far and apart from the Bromley game looks a shadow of himself. Bowman- 15th in the league for his goals. In fact he is our only player in the top 25 goalscorers. Richards form/confidence has gone since he was shafted at centre back.
I personally think that CH is not up to the job. Our away performances for the last year under CH have been shocking. Our home performances not much better either.

[tommyg]

Just got back. Was torn whether to go today and am quickly regretting my decision. I mean, seriously, what is the fecking point? I haven't been this disillusioned with the club since Chris Roberts was at the helm. There is almost an air of inevitably about us losing to teams like Braintree and Altrincham. Make no mistake about it, we deserved to lose today. We weren't bullied by a stereotypical run-of-the-mill non-league side full of big and ugly bruisers. In fact, they had quite a few small players. We were simply outplayed by a part-time team who played some neat football on the deck and showed more heart and desire. We were good in the first 10 minutes and final five. The rest was utter dross.

O'Achie is better with his back to goal because when he's in front of it he freezes. He missed a near-open goal early on and it's pointless playing him as a lone striker. He's good foil for another forward in a 4-4-2 but he hasn't got the right attributes to lead the line on his own. After letting Altrincham off the hook, they started to grow in confidence and peppered our goal with shots. Their opener came when Reeves out-jumped Pearce and lobbed Seabright with a looping header. A goalkeeper shouldn't be getting lobbed by a header. And Pearce shouldn't be getting out-jumped when a cross comes into our box.

We were lucky to go into the break only one down but it was only a matter of time before they would score a second after we swapped ends. Seabright parried a shot and their player was quickest to react to slot in the rebound. At that point I was resigned to defeat - until Briscoe scored a peach out of nothing, firing into the far corner from the edge of the box. Their goalkeeper didn't move. After that I thought we'd throw the kitchen sink at them but it wasn't until they had a player sent off - his second yellow for a dive which was a good call by by referee - that we threatened to snatch an equaliser. Downes had a great chance but volleyed over, Seabright went up for a corner and almost got his head to it and we had a penalty appeal turned down. We couldn't see what happened as we were at the opposite end but Briscoe was so incensed I think he pushed the referee! In the end, though, we deserved diddly squat from the game.

Too many below-par performances today. In fact, they were all rubbish apart from Chapell, Downes and Briscoe. Seabright still gives me the jitters, our full-backs - especially Berry - were poor and Pearce has gone from prized horse to carthorse in 12 months. Peacock strutted around again but doesn't actually do very much apart from looking pretty, Ajala huffed and puffed but had no end product, Cameron was woeful and I've already discussed O'Achie's shortcomings. And he may as well be as short as Danny Stevens because he never wins a fecking header despite being 6ft 3in! Yeoman barely touched the ball when he came on but at least Briscoe proved to Hargreaves that had should be starting. He might be best mates with Mr Kipling but unlike most of our other jessies, he's not afraid to shoot and is one of very few players we have who can actually make a difference. Talking of making a difference, Young has carried this shoddy lot for most of the season. It would be nice if others could return the favour when our captain isn't at the races like today. I feel sorry for him. He looks so frustrated at the inadequacies of his team-mates that often he will try and do everything himself. It's like when you played football on the school playground and there was always a useless fat kid who would join in but nobody would ever pass him the ball because you knew he would immediately lose it. The problem for Young is that he has 10 of these useless fat kids with him on the pitch. If I was him I'd desert the sinking ship. He's too good for us and deserves better.

And Thea, next time keep your money in your pocket. Make the team get up at 5am and travel on the day because going the day before makes no difference whatsoever. Hargreaves will have to accept it or walk the plank. No mention of Altrincham's budget in his post-match interview I see. Forget the play-offs, we need to start looking over our shoulders. We still need three or four wins from our remaining 15 games and given we've won four in our last 20 (or something like that) it could soon be squeaky bum time. After all, Torquay don't do mid-table...

[arcadia]

I know I harp on but all Chris has to do is pick the best side and the results would improve. What is Cameron doing in the side. Bristoe should have started the last two games. What is Ajala doing playing as a striker when you've got Bristoe on the bench. Ajala should be where Cameron is playing it's a no brainer.
It's easy to pick your best side if you know it, Chris seems to pick the side from training games which have no meaning. The tactics are to complex for simple players who can only do the basics. The players do not look comfortable playing from the back yes it looks good, when it works but players lose confidence when it does not. I've had to stop I'm so frustrated as we are under achieving.

[hector]

It does seem ridiculous to be considering relegation. I don't think we will be relegated but I feel so ambivalent about TUFC lately, that I am not sure I particularly care. If we have sunk so low that we worry about staying in such a crap league as the Conference, then we may as well sink beneath it. One crap league is pretty much like another one. What actual difference does it make? If the Football League is now beyond us, then it doesn't really matter what league we are in. Who cares?

[SuperNickyWroe]

On the day of appointment

no, actually it was the evening he was on spotlight slagging knill off and bigging himself up for the job.

I (and others) said it was a bad idea then......

[wodger of awabia]

As hector says, despite budgets,refs etc etc to be in the bottom half of this league is just embarassing. There is NO justification to be below part times teams managed by a schoolteacher. Thats is just ridiculous.

Yes! ah! but wait a minute! could this be a case of location, location, location? Altringham for example are able to attract the best part time players from Greater Manchester, Merseyside, & perhaps the Stoke on Trent & Sheffield areas. Part time players would most likely be earning more than most full time L2 & Conference players, I would guess that a self employed plumber, builder, electrician etc. could easily earn £750.00 per week, others in " the professions" like Jeff Stellings favourite "the good Doctor" aka Kenny Suker of Scottish Footballwould be earning much more.This together with say £300.00 from football would be a pretty good wage. I suppose you could say that part time players should never be able to match full timers on a fitness level, so should not be able to compete for 90 mins. but if they are working hard for 8 hours a day then they could easily be as fit as pros who spend a lot of the day on the "X" box.

[StretfordGull]

I've only just been able to bring myself to post after the game.
It doesn't get any worse than that.
There was no fight from the team. Apart from the first 10 minutes, we were appalling. Some posters on here have said that the performance was ok. It wasn't.
Even at 2-1 we didn't look like scoring. Everyone's head was down, including our captain and the manager didn't seem to want to bother to motivate them.
Ben Harding isn't good at football.
Tom cruise isn't good at football.
Dreadful players I'm afraid, but surely not worse than any altrincham players.
They played well, altrincham. Had most of the possession and played the ball on the ground.
I imagine the players want to play for the club and are coached to a decent degree by the coaching staff.
That would be nice wouldn't it.
As much as I feel sorry for Hargreaves, inheriting a club with players who think they're too good to play at conference level, who are only prepared to put in a modicum of effort, he still has a job to do. MOTIVATE THEM. Do your job.
After all of these games, why doesn't he know his best team? If he does, play that team. Playing Ofori up front on his own is a joke. In the first half there were crosses coming into the box which he was unable to get on the end of and ajala wasn't getting into the box. It needed to be 442, it was obious. Briscoe is clearly the best striker at the club as he proved by scoring a goal Ofori wouldn't even be able to dream of. If Briscoe is unfit, guess what? GET HIM FIT. The seasons nearly finished! Why is Ben Harding playing? What are his attributes? When he came on, Courtney Richards was the only player to try and cajole the players by way of encouragement.
Courtney Cameron doesn't want to play for the club. Don't play him then. He's just not putting the effort in. How dare he? Who does he think he is? Put Briscoe up front and ajala on the wing. 50 minutes of Briscoe is better than 90 minutes of Cameron.
Add altrincham to alfreton, Telford and Braintree. Utterly, utterly embarrassing. This group of players are better than those teams. If we have consistently lost to those teams, what questions have been asked? What has been done about it? When some of these players aren't putting the effort in, why on earth are we bothering to turn up.
What a complete and utter joke.

[Scott Brehaut]

I've only just been able to bring myself to post after the game.
It doesn't get any worse than that.
There was no fight from the team. Apart from the first 10 minutes, we were appalling. Some posters on here have said that the performance was ok. It wasn't.
Even at 2-1 we didn't look like scoring. Everyone's head was down, including our captain and the manager didn't seem to want to bother to motivate them.
Ben Harding isn't good at football.
Tom cruise isn't good at football.
Dreadful players I'm afraid, but surely not worse than any altrincham players.
They played well, altrincham. Had most of the possession and played the ball on the ground.
I imagine the players want to play for the club and are coached to a decent degree by the coaching staff.
That would be nice wouldn't it.
As much as I feel sorry for Hargreaves, inheriting a club with players who think they're too good to play at conference level, who are only prepared to put in a modicum of effort, he still has a job to do. MOTIVATE THEM. Do your job.
After all of these games, why doesn't he know his best team? If he does, play that team. Playing Ofori up front on his own is a joke. In the first half there were crosses coming into the box which he was unable to get on the end of and ajala wasn't getting into the box. It needed to be 442, it was obious. Briscoe is clearly the best striker at the club as he proved by scoring a goal Ofori wouldn't even be able to dream of. If Briscoe is unfit, guess what? GET HIM FIT. The seasons nearly finished! Why is Ben Harding playing? What are his attributes? When he came on, Courtney Richards was the only player to try and cajole the players by way of encouragement.
Courtney Cameron doesn't want to play for the club. Don't play him then. He's just not putting the effort in. How dare he? Who does he think he is? Put Briscoe up front and ajala on the wing. 50 minutes of Briscoe is better than 90 minutes of Cameron.
Add altrincham to alfreton, Telford and Braintree. Utterly, utterly embarrassing. This group of players are better than those teams. If we have consistently lost to those teams, what questions have been asked? What has been done about it? When some of these players aren't putting the effort in, why on earth are we bothering to turn up.
What a complete and utter joke.

Please StretfordGull, I implore you, send this in to the club. Print it out 20 times and send it to the manager, coaching staff and the players. Copy it in to Thaea and the Board.

Until we get rid of lazy **** who would rather do **** all and get paid (except we can't get rid of them until the end of this season), instead of putting in a decent shift, we will continue on our downward spiral.

Until CH pulls his head out of his arse and realises that HE is part of the problem, we will continue our downward spiral.

Until we get further investment into the club, we will continue our downward spiral.

A new manager won't help - the players don't give a **** and are only interested in getting paid. We can't replace them as we have less money than we did when we got rid of Ling, Knill et al.

We were **** when we got rid of O'Kane etc and failed to support the manager with a decent wedge of the transfer income to replace them.

Basically, we are **** and there's nothing we can do about it.

**** I tell you - ****!!