Torquay v Eastleigh 21.3.17

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Post by Mattpuma »

Maybe if we didnt kick the ball out for goal kicks non stop, then the keeper wouldnt have been able to waste time!
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Post by MellowYellow »

Mattpuma wrote: 22 Mar 2017, 07:17 Maybe if we didnt kick the ball out for goal kicks non stop, then the keeper wouldnt have been able to waste time!
By that I assume you mean we stop playing our season long tactic of 'hoof-ball' and revert to a 'ball to feet' formula. It wont happen but we can dream. It's why so many of the premier league starlets we brought in on loan from Wes Brom and Bournemouth get/got so little game time, they have never seen nor played 'hoof-ball' (it's not because they were too young). A good source informs me that at West Brom their young starlets are fined £20 if they kick the ball above waist height more than twice in a training session.
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Post by samuel »

The time wasting last night was probably the worst I have seen and yet, amazingly, not one Eastleigh player was booked. How is it, the most popular sport in the world, cannot get to grips with cheating. It is seriously affecting my enjoyment of the game. Add to the time wasting the diving, feigning injury, it's become an absolute joke. Why didn't the referee sort this out. We have the keeper feigning injury to such an extent he can't take the goal kick. His plan to get the Torquay player sent off didn't work. Next moment he IS taking the goal kicks. Then he slaps the ground after a 50/50 challenge as if he has a serious injury. All a sham. If Torquay played like that I would be embarrassed and would not go. The time wasting and cheating is so bad and so regular now it has almost become the norm. I don't know if in the long term I can hack it, I just don't like these tactics which are a million miles away from the football I grew up with.
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Post by CP Gull »

Well what can you say after that! Same old, same old weaknesses keep coming up time and time again - but nothing ever changes! The same 11 players start week after week , with the same formation and tactics and the same substitutes coming on at the same stage of the game!!! Off the back of a rare away win, courtesy of an injury time winner at bottom of the table Southport and a (fair enough) creditable home draw with play off chasing Tranmere - Nicho worries (again) that the players might have gone into this game thinking "they had cracked it" .... really?????

The fact is that despite all our hard work and neat approach play - we kept the ball really well at times - we failed yet again in the two areas of the pitch where it really matters - both boxes!

The forwards never look like scoring and they never get on the end of inviting crosses into the box. For goodness sake we have quite possibly the best deliverer of a ball from the left wing in the whole league in Dan Sparkes and yet time and time again not one of our strikers gets in front of his man and attacks the cross in the way that Kieffer Moore showed how it should be done in his all too brief stay here.

The defenders are too slow, both in terms of lack of pace and also in speed of thought. They do not react to situations anywhere near quick enough and are too static - the first two goals Eastleigh scored being classic examples - "criminal defending" I agree Nicho! As for the third goal, yes it was an excellent strike from the edge of the box but we could all see (from behind the goal) that he was going to do what he did and yet the two or three yellow shirts in front of him failed to get there in time and/or weren't brave or bothered enough to throw themselves in and block the shot!

For all the sympathy I have for Nicho's situation, the fact remains that he built this team, he signed (or re-signed) every single one of them and for that he must carry the can - plenty of other teams working with similar of even smaller budgets have done better than us and don't get me started on our pathetic use of the loan system this season (Moore, Fitzpatrick, Hodgkiss and Racine, albeit briefly, apart).

The concensus amongst most of my mates after the game is that there really are only three or four of this lot that you would actually want to keep next season anyway, not that they will still be here though as regardless of what league we are in - it will be NL South - they will have offers elsewhere and move on, but really other than Young, Sparkes and perhaps Moore, maybe Williams (under a different Manager!) and Hodgkiss (but he's gone and probably won't be coming back) ....is there anyone else that you could really make a case for keeping?

Personally I thought last night was a must win game, whilst I think Southport and North Ferriby are gone, I said before the game that I thought York and Woking were still both more than capable of getting out of it and after last nights results that seems to be looking more possible than ever. We, now have just three home games left - having picked up only one point in the last FOUR home games - and FIVE away games! Our form "on the road" has been terrible all season and I really cannot see us picking up too many more points from our remaining away games. For those holding out hope of our "superior goal difference" maybe counting for something at the end of the season ... well, let's wait and see what that looks like after we have played at the likes of Lincoln, Dover, Aldershot ... shall we!

Talk of new signings, for that is all it is, after the game all seems too little too late I'm afraid. Unfortunately, I think the "Kieffer Moore month" and a couple of encouraging results agains FGR lulled both the owners and the management into a false sense of security. They were both guilty of complacence ... thinking we would just see out the season and limp along, probably settling for 17th position (which at one time we seemed to be permanently stuck in - oh for the "dizzy heights" of 17th place now!!!) and gearing up for wholesale changes in the summer .... has proved our undoing as it so often has been the case with so many other teams in the past who think they have enough to just "get by".

As for the management situation, it's probably too late now - with only just over a week until the deadline to bring players in closes - any new man would pretty much have to work with what he's got, and they are simply not good enough no matter who is in charge of them! The size of the squad is dangerously small too - pathetically small in fact - and is an embarrassment at even our lowly level. All this "talk" over the last couple of months of new additions really hasn't amounted to anything - indeed a squad bereft of Fitzpatrick and now Hodgkiss means we now have less quality than we had but by also loaning out the likes of Gerring and Duke we are also barely able to name a full squad - only "padded out" with the non playing Manager and kids such as Hancox and Lee who are unlikely to feature any time soon.

As for Nicho's post match analysis on Facebook ... time to stop it in my opinion. You can only come up with a certain number of explanations for so many below par performances over the course of a season without coming up with the obvious ones ... that is that neither the playing squad or (sadly) the management team are up to the job. As a consequence he keeps trotting out the same old stuff ( surely he must "cut and paste" a lot of his stuff to save time!) constantly laying the blame at the players and deflecting any blame away from his own "preparation, tactics and formations" and "bigging up" previous performances/runs of results when they have only been able to string two wins together ONCE all season!

Continually (well it feels like it!) demanding a "reaction" after a poor performance is just getting boring now. He has asked for a reaction so many times on his weekly post on Facebook this season that it has lost any sort of impact on there ...so you can only imagine what sort of response it is likely to get from those in the dressing room who he sees every DAY! Quite understandably he (Nicho) sounds so downbeat these days - compared to the chirpy young man when he first got the job - and inevitably when you come across like that it must be difficult to rouse and inspire the players - small wonder he has turned to a hypnotherapist then!!!

The only benefit in bringing in a new man would be to start to build and plan for next season - almost certainly in NL South - but does anyone know what a TUFC team in that League would even look like ? Full time/Part Time ? God (or perhaps GI) only knows!

As for the owners, well what can you say ? NOTHING that is all you can say, because let's face it that is all they have brought to our club!

There was talk (by the outgoing Chairman Dave Phillips!) of investment .... NOTHING
There was talk of backing the Manager with new players .....NOTHING
There was talk of appointing a Board of locally based supporters ..... NOTHING
There was talk of appointing a Chairman .... NOTHING
There was talk of a "five year plan" ..... NOTHING
There was talk of a fans forum ..... NOTHING

The only visible changes have been the appointment of a General Manager in Geoff Harrop - only visible by his absence from anywhere further than a few feet from the Boardroom yesterday (perhaps he has seen SG's profile pic on here and thought better of it!) and a "Recruitment" Manager who after nearly three weeks in the job has delivered ..... NOTHING.
Last edited by CP Gull on 22 Mar 2017, 10:27, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by torregull »

Add recruitment of local Board members to your list of what was promised.
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Post by nickbrod »

Well said Chris. See my comments on BTPIR.
These are sad days.
That over 1500 turned up last night, watched as once again the club sinks to its lowest ebb, and many clapped the team off. Unbelievable.
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Post by brucie »

I do agree. What is the point of Nicholson saying "he wants a reaction" after every defeat. Also he says that Eastleigh were "favourites" for the game.

Why? they have been abyssmal. If this is the sort of attitude he instills in the players then perhaps no wonder we cannot win games. Sure they had some "big names" In Tubbs and Constable but **** me these players are donkeys and are so far over the top it is untrue. Its a massive lost opportunity for us.

It does sound a very frustrating night though for those in attendance _ I actually though about going last night but am glad that I didn't. Watching a team timewaste for 25 minutes of a game isn't a pleasant experience.

The officials cannot be absolved from responsibility. Persistent timewasting and feigning injury should result in some cards being issued but should we be surprised that the incompetents masquerading as referees do nothing about it.

Is blatant timewasting so hard to spot though?

Does anyone remember the player who got sent off at Plainmoor a few years back. He was a well known targetman around the lower leagues can't recall his name. He ran over to the far side of the pitch when substituted and then started to walk off slowly - it was blatantly obvious what he was doing and the ref thought so too as he red carded him.

So its not so hard t osort out after all......
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Post by merse btpir »

Richard Hill was standing in the wrong technical area last night as far as I'm concerned!

Read more: http://thelondonmafia.proboards.com/pos ... z4c39FfvI3
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Post by CP Gull »

brucie wrote: 22 Mar 2017, 10:32
Does anyone remember the player who got sent off at Plainmoor a few years back. He was a well known targetman around the lower leagues can't recall his name. He ran over to the far side of the pitch when substituted and then started to walk off slowly - it was blatantly obvious what he was doing and the ref thought so too as he red carded him.

So its not so hard t osort out after all......
Funny you should mention that Brucie, as I brought up the exact same incident when having a chat with Paul Bastard in the Gulls Nest after the game. Like you I couldn't remember his name, but did recall that he was a proper lower league journeyman who turned out for several clubs. If I remember correctly, on seeing his number go up ( with 6 minutes left on the clock) he deliberately turned and walked in the opposite direction (towards the Popside) and then started to walk off at snail's pace - all of this was seen by the referee - and fair play to him, he brandished what was in fact a second yellow card, followed by a Red and Boston United (the opposition) were reduced to ten men for what was I seem to recall an ill tempered game .

Three minutes later Boston were reduced to nine men when an early substitute also received a second yellow, followed by a red - in typical TUFC fashion though we still managed to lose the game 1-0 .... and their Manager was none other than Steve Evans .... the player concerned was Drewe Broughton in the 2006/7 season.

If only a few more referees were strong enough to take this sort of action, I would imagine it could be eradicated quite quickly. The sort of time wasting seen last night by Stack in the Eastleigh goal really did take it to another level though and I said at the time that (no exaggeration here) I reckon we probably lost a good 10 minutes of "action" from the game last night while Stack moved deliberately to the furthest point of his six yard box from where the ball went out to line up his kick - pathetic!

Can you imagine if that sort of stuff was going on in the Premiership week in, week out - I reckon it would soon bring about a change in the rules back to the old one - whereby the kick must be taken on the side of the goal where the ball went out. Unfortunately this blatant time wasting seems to be far more commonplace in our League and the lower echelons of the Football League - so less likely for the governing bodies to do anything to stop it unfortunately!
Last edited by CP Gull on 22 Mar 2017, 11:50, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by merse btpir »

Chris; you've made an excellent, well thought out and erudite post this morning which only goes to confirm that the only quality journalism you'll find on anything Torquay United related comes from the K'wankers rather than the so called 'professionals'.

With his sort of attitude towards us, no wonder Dave Phillips got taken for a ride and now wonder people like Stuart Wood and Nigel Tabb carry on like sycophantic blindmen toeing the party line as the ship goes down.

There's none so blind as those who cannot see!
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Post by desperado »

Excellent posts by CP Gull, as usual he has got everything spot on, cant really add anything except that this is the most
depressed I have ever been in 53 years supporting this team
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Post by merse btpir »

CP Gull wrote: 22 Mar 2017, 09:32
As for the management situation, it's probably too late now - with only just over a week until the deadline to bring players in closes - any new man would pretty much have to work with what he's got, and they are simply not good enough no matter who is in charge of them! The size of the squad is dangerously small too - pathetically small in fact - and is an embarrassment at even our lowly level. All this "talk" over the last couple of months of new additions really hasn't amounted to anything - indeed a squad bereft of Fitzpatrick and now Hodgkiss means we now have less quality than we had but by also loaning out the likes of Gerring and Duke we are also barely able to name a full squad - only "padded out" with the non playing Manager and kids such as Hancox and Lee who are unlikely to feature any time soon.

The only benefit in bringing in a new man would be to start to build and plan for next season - almost certainly in NL South - but does anyone know what a TUFC team in that League would even look like ? Full time/Part Time ? God (or perhaps GI) only knows!

As for the owners, well what can you say ? NOTHING that is all you can say, because let's face it that is all they have brought to our club!

There was talk (by the outgoing Chairman Dave Phillips!) of investment .... NOTHING
There was talk of backing the Manager with new players .....NOTHING
There was talk of appointing a Board of locally based supporters ..... NOTHING
There was talk of appointing a Chairman .... NOTHING
There was talk of a "five year plan" ..... NOTHING
There was talk of a fans forum ..... NOTHING
These are the most pertinent aspects of a desperately out of touch ownership who really haven't a clue about professional football. An ownership who climbed on board a sinking ship and have only really succeeded in steering it into a different jagged rock than the one towards which it was heading anyway.

The description of a general manager who watches the game from that vantage point that he chooses for it's proximity to the directors suite rather than obtain a proper professional perspective from the halfway line says all about the 'holiday camp' atmosphere of the club that was described to me recently by one of the players who served under Alan Knill that also gave the impression that in the world of Thea Bristow, having a jolly good time was of paramount importance rather than the hard-nosed aspects of professional football.

Until this cub separates the social side from the business side then it will be forever consigned to the also rans of the football world and a pushover for properly run clubs to overcome.
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Post by Neal »

CP Gull wrote: 22 Mar 2017, 09:32 Well what can you say after that! Same old, same old weaknesses keep coming up time and time again - but nothing ever changes! The same 11 players start week after week , with the same formation and tactics and the same substitutes coming on at the same stage of the game!!! Off the back of a rare away win, courtesy of an injury time winner at bottom of the table Southport and a (fair enough) creditable home draw with play off chasing Tranmere - Nicho worries (again) that the players might have gone into this game thinking "they had cracked it" .... really?????

The fact is that despite all our hard work and neat approach play - we kept the ball really well at times - we failed yet again in the two areas of the pitch where it really matters - both boxes!

The forwards never look like scoring and they never get on the end of inviting crosses into the box. For goodness sake we have quite possibly the best deliverer of a ball from the left wing in the whole league in Dan Sparkes and yet time and time again not one of our strikers gets in front of his man and attacks the cross in the way that Kieffer Moore showed how it should be done in his all too brief stay here.

The defenders are too slow, both in terms of lack of pace and also in speed of thought. They do not react to situations anywhere near quick enough and are too static - the first two goals Eastleigh scored being classic examples - "criminal defending" I agree Nicho! As for the third goal, yes it was an excellent strike from the edge of the box but we could all see (from behind the goal) that he was going to do what he did and yet the two or three yellow shirts in front of him failed to get there in time and/or weren't brave or bothered enough to throw themselves in and block the shot!

For all the sympathy I have for Nicho's situation, the fact remains that he built this team, he signed (or re-signed) every single one of them and for that he must carry the can - plenty of other teams working with similar of even smaller budgets have done better than us and don't get me started on our pathetic use of the loan system this season (Moore, Fitzpatrick, Hodgkiss and Racine, albeit briefly, apart).

The concensus amongst most of my mates after the game is that there really are only three or four of this lot that you would actually want to keep next season anyway, not that they will still be here though as regardless of what league we are in - it will be NL South - they will have offers elsewhere and move on, but really other than Young, Sparkes and perhaps Moore, maybe Williams (under a different Manager!) and Hodgkiss (but he's gone and probably won't be coming back) ....is there anyone else that you could really make a case for keeping?

Personally I thought last night was a must win game, whilst I think Southport and North Ferriby are gone, I said before the game that I thought York and Woking were still both more than capable of getting out of it and after last nights results that seems to be looking more possible than ever. We, now have just three home games left - having picked up only one point in the last FOUR home games - and FIVE away games! Our form "on the road" has been terrible all season and I really cannot see us picking up too many more points from our remaining away games. For those holding out hope of our "superior goal difference" maybe counting for something at the end of the season ... well, let's wait and see what that looks like after we have played at the likes of Lincoln, Dover, Aldershot ... shall we!

Talk of new signings, for that is all it is, after the game all seems too little too late I'm afraid. Unfortunately, I think the "Kieffer Moore month" and a couple of encouraging results agains FGR lulled both the owners and the management into a false sense of security. They were both guilty of complacence ... thinking we would just see out the season and limp along, probably settling for 17th position (which at one time we seemed to be permanently stuck in - oh for the "dizzy heights" of 17th place now!!!) and gearing up for wholesale changes in the summer .... has proved our undoing as it so often has been the case with so many other teams in the past who think they have enough to just "get by".

As for the management situation, it's probably too late now - with only just over a week until the deadline to bring players in closes - any new man would pretty much have to work with what he's got, and they are simply not good enough no matter who is in charge of them! The size of the squad is dangerously small too - pathetically small in fact - and is an embarrassment at even our lowly level. All this "talk" over the last couple of months of new additions really hasn't amounted to anything - indeed a squad bereft of Fitzpatrick and now Hodgkiss means we now have less quality than we had but by also loaning out the likes of Gerring and Duke we are also barely able to name a full squad - only "padded out" with the non playing Manager and kids such as Hancox and Lee who are unlikely to feature any time soon.

As for Nicho's post match analysis on Facebook ... time to stop it in my opinion. You can only come up with a certain number of explanations for so many below par performances over the course of a season without coming up with the obvious ones ... that is that neither the playing squad or (sadly) the management team are up to the job. As a consequence he keeps trotting out the same old stuff ( surely he must "cut and paste" a lot of his stuff to save time!) constantly laying the blame at the players and deflecting any blame away from his own "preparation, tactics and formations" and "bigging up" previous performances/runs of results when they have only been able to string two wins together ONCE all season!

Continually (well it feels like it!) demanding a "reaction" after a poor performance is just getting boring now. He has asked for a reaction so many times on his weekly post on Facebook this season that it has lost any sort of impact on there ...so you can only imagine what sort of response it is likely to get from those in the dressing room who he sees every DAY! Quite understandably he (Nicho) sounds so downbeat these days - compared to the chirpy young man when he first got the job - and inevitably when you come across like that it must be difficult to rouse and inspire the players - small wonder he has turned to a hypnotherapist then!!!

The only benefit in bringing in a new man would be to start to build and plan for next season - almost certainly in NL South - but does anyone know what a TUFC team in that League would even look like ? Full time/Part Time ? God (or perhaps GI) only knows!

As for the owners, well what can you say ? NOTHING that is all you can say, because let's face it that is all they have brought to our club!

There was talk (by the outgoing Chairman Dave Phillips!) of investment .... NOTHING
There was talk of backing the Manager with new players .....NOTHING
There was talk of appointing a Board of locally based supporters ..... NOTHING
There was talk of appointing a Chairman .... NOTHING
There was talk of a "five year plan" ..... NOTHING
There was talk of a fans forum ..... NOTHING

The only visible changes have been the appointment of a General Manager in Geoff Harrop - only visible by his absence from anywhere further than a few feet from the Boardroom yesterday (perhaps he has seen SG's profile pic on here and thought better of it!) and a "Recruitment" Manager who after nearly three weeks in the job has delivered ..... NOTHING.
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Post by Jerry »

CP Gull wrote: 22 Mar 2017, 11:42


If only a few more referees were strong enough to take this sort of action, I would imagine it could be eradicated quite quickly. The sort of time wasting seen last night by Stack in the Eastleigh goal really did take it to another level though and I said at the time that (no exaggeration here) I reckon we probably lost a good 10 minutes of "action" from the game last night while Stack moved deliberately to the furthest point of his six yard box from where the ball went out to line up his kick - pathetic!

Can you imagine if that sort of stuff was going on in the Premiership week in, week out - I reckon it would soon bring about a change in the rules back to the old one - whereby the kick must be taken on the side of the goal where the ball went out. Unfortunately this blatant time wasting seems to be far more commonplace in our League and the lower echelons of the Football League - so less likely for the governing bodies to do anything to stop it unfortunately!
The ref actually called their captain over in the first half and pointed to his watch and then to several points around the ground and indicated that their should be no more time wasting. But of course that was it and he weakly allowed it to continue without punishment for the rest of the game. Including of course the ridiculous sight of Hoyte being "unable" to take a throw in because the hail was hurting him!!
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Post by LaPotato »

Jerry wrote: 22 Mar 2017, 12:53 Including of course the ridiculous sight of Hoyte being "unable" to take a throw in because the hail was hurting him!!
Hope the shot he took to his tackle has done some permanent damage!
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