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Expectations for next season

Posted: 13 May 2017, 14:08
by Southampton Gull
Or perhaps they get it from the clear and concise history of GI .................

Expectations for next season

Posted: 13 May 2017, 19:54
by desperado
A points tally in the sixties though as this means only 2 more wins and a draw than this season it does
not seem much, and should be easily achievable, Perhaps the high sixties which would see us flirting
with the play offs. Whatever, there must be progress and improvement whatever the budget ! or Nicho
will be a dead man walking - where have I heard that before ?

Expectations for next season

Posted: 14 May 2017, 16:57
by desperado
'Mid table wont reverse the descent of the average gate to appalling new lows' says the Prophet of Doom
?? Our average gate went up this season according to two sources I looked at
Dont think they will drop any lower personally, think the loyal fan base is there and GI not putting any money into
the team wont make it drop any lower. Dont think our lowest ever gate will be in danger.

Expectations for next season

Posted: 14 May 2017, 19:04
by merse btpir
desperado wrote: 14 May 2017, 16:57 'Mid table wont reverse the descent of the average gate to appalling new lows' says the Prophet of Doom
?? Our average gate went up this season according to two sources I looked at
It did; from 1,803 in 2015-16 to 1,888 an increase of 4.7% and if the club budget for any more than that then they are deluded. But they and we know it is massively down on what was coming through the turnstiles during the last season of Football League membership and those vistas of swathes of empty yellow seats at nearly every home game tell a salutary tale.

That's not being a Prophet of Doom; it's taking a hard-nosed and professional look at it and the playing budget will be set accordingly. That is how responsibly the club has to be managed and (as I always say) it then needs to be managed by a manager who can manage within those parameters.

That's not having a 'down' on the current manager; it is facing facts.

There are plenty of clubs operating on lower average gates than Torquay United and several fellow managers having to work on smaller budgets than Kevin Nicholson ~ AND making a better fist of it!

Expectations for next season

Posted: 14 May 2017, 19:25
by tomogull
merse btpir wrote: 14 May 2017, 19:04 There are plenty of clubs operating on lower average gates than Torquay United and several fellow managers having to work on smaller budgets than Kevin Nicholson ~ AND making a better fist of it!
You don't know what budget Kevin Nicholson is working with and I very much doubt that you know the budget of any other club in the National League. It's all pure guesswork on your part.

Expectations for next season

Posted: 14 May 2017, 19:44
by arcadia
forevertufc wrote: 11 May 2017, 21:33 Not really Arcadia. Remember last close season, Nicho was asked he said promotion, and made himself look a right one, it's a question I'd rather, not be asked of the manager personally speaking.

As for my personal belief, think a comfortable mid-table finish should be achievable.
If Nicho said that there's got to be a question mark on his judgement as I watched every pre-season game and thought we had signed a few players that would struggle but you don't want to believe it.

Expectations for next season

Posted: 14 May 2017, 20:18
by Southampton Gull
What else would you expect any manager to say

Expectations for next season

Posted: 14 May 2017, 21:00
by Dave
Agreed, that's why I rather Nicho simply wasn't ask the question, he won't feel the need to give an answer that is manager speak, rather that an honest opinion.

Just to pick up on a point made above. My expectations for next season, is honest and not based merely on hope, the evidence, our team despite all their woe's finished 17th, 1 place of a middle 8 finish, they were 5 points shy of 13th, and 6 points shy of finishing in 11th place, what that shows to me is, not much improvement required to have safe, easy comfortable season next time around.

Expectations for next season

Posted: 15 May 2017, 00:17
by merse btpir
threelittlepiglets wrote: 14 May 2017, 22:41 Don't be daft Merse knows everything !!!! Apparently....
Really? From Football Economy.Com this:

Tranmere Rovers hoped to win promotion to the Football League in today's play off final at Wembley, but the club has required some investment since Mark Palios bought the club in August 2014. Average attendances of 5,000 bring in £1 million a year in gate receipts but the playing budget is £2 million, running Prenton Park costs £1 million and their academy £400,000. Victory today would have been worth £1.5m as it now is to Forest Green Rovers. The club has developed a link up with China that will mean Tranmere recruiting coaches to work with the Little London School in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia.


Then there was this today on the same website:
A correspondent sent me some interesting questions about investors who get involved in non-league football and I thought it would be worth reproducing them and my answers here.

The first question was, why do you think wealthy investors get involved in non-league clubs as opposed to sides in the Football League?   My reply was, 'I would say that investors get involved because they think can get a quick return for relatively little investment.   Sometimes they have failed in attempts to buy Football League clubs (AFC Fylde and Fleetwood when they were non-league).

'The second question was 'How difficult is it to make non-league clubs sustainable when you're pumping in large amounts of money, such as Billericay and Forest Green Rovers?   I replied, 'I think it is a lot more difficult than a lot of these investors realise to make the clubs sustainable.   A lot depends on whether you have a good population density in the area and a lack of competition. The lack of the first eventually did for Rushden & Diamonds when they lost their benefactor. Forest Green Rovers scores well on the second criterion, but not the first.   Billericay does well on both criteria.'

The third question was, 'Is financial fair play something that should be considered in the higher reaches of the non-league?'   I replied, 'I don't think financial fair play would be that beneficial.   It hasn't worked well in the Football League.'


Well Mark Palios won't be getting as quick a return on his investment as he must have thought he would be when Tranmere dropped out of the Football League two years ago and they now face a potentially ruinous third year in the non-league wilderness without any help whatsoever from any parachute payments which now dry up totally and also of course without that £1.5 million they hoped to secure today!

I don't foresee Forest Green Rovers making a quick return to the non league world and to me Dale Vince and Ecotricity will begin to make handsome returns on their inivestment once their much vaunted sports/technology park and new stadium are up and running and who knows where this little club could end up competing.

Gaming International have to be regarded in that 'wealthy investor' category and we all know what we are being told of their past history and then make our assumptions on just what their primary motive is. 'A quick return for relatively little investment'? Well they'll be well on their way to that if they get the freehold off the Mayor won't they and despite what has been said tonight I don't think there can be a reasonable assumption that the football budget for next season will be very much different than the £600,000 budget for the past two seasons.

For those of you who need enlightening the 'Billericay' scenario is the recent takeover of the club by Genn Tamplin who had designs on Dagenham & Redbridge but got rebuffed and has already racked up a weekly wage bill of c£6,000 pw with selected players on a grand a week and that to play in the Ryman Premier!

 Disposable household income in Torbay is 86 per cent of the national average.  Workplace earnings are 72 per cent of the national average. Productivity is 61 per cent of the national average.   One in ten of the population is claiming incapacity benefit. Like many seaside resorts, the prosperous veneer of Torquay hides a great deal of deprivation.  In 2010 Torquay was among the top twenty per cent of most deprived local authority areas in England and Wales and the most deprived in the south-west.   It's not a good socio-economic background for establishing a successful football club.

Distribution, hotels and restaurants account for 33 per cent of employment compared with 22 per cent in England as a whole. Financial services account for just 12.5 per cent compared with 24 per cent in England as a whole.

The Torbay Economic Strategy for 2010-15 notes, 'For the past two decaces Torbay has experienced a gradual but persistent decline in visitor numbers and associated declines to spend per head.  During this period there has been a dynamic globalisation of the tourism industry, combined with a revolution in consumer expectations, which until recently Torbay has failed to recognise.'

'Traditionally the English Riveria was a weekly and two weekly holiday destination but this had declined to 7.6 nights in 2003, and then sharply reduced to 4 nights by 2007.   Many other emerging destinations offering city or rural breaks have increased at a much faster rate than Torbay.
Torbay has relatively high levels of deprivation.  Part of this deprivation arises from a reliance on predominantly low paid, low skill jobs within the tourism sector which have resulted in wages in Torbay being significantly lower than the regional average....for this reason Torbay is often cited as a difficult area to run a professional full-time football operation but an even more difficult place to run a part-time football operation of the calibre necessary to thrive in the National league.

The population of Torbay is just under 130,000 and as such professional football clubs rarely flourish in seaside resorts which often attract elderly retirees who either are not interested in football or have allegiances elsewhere?   Just under a quarter of the population of Torquay is over 65 and the 20 to 39 age group is under represented.The hinterland is not densely populated and one soon runs into the spheres of influence of Exeter City and Plymouth Argyle. United have been through a series of well documented financial failings , especially since relegation from the Football League and especially since Thea Bristow decided to end her investment in the club, even though the detail of the financial 'Fairyland' that she presided over now reveals that the club was indeed in financial crisis well before they decided to come clean about it.

So seeing as the subject of this thread is "Expectations For Next Season"; the point I was making in my earlier post which drew a 'Prophet of Doom' cry is that use of common sense and awareness should tell anyone that more of the same will more than likely be the outcome and that expectations that the playing budget should be any higher than for the past two seasons of austerity are as daft as a brush in my opinion and that the mind set must be set on a management who can operate on a more productive level from within this budget and I rather think this mind set will emerge from within the boardroom rather than from without.

Expectations for next season

Posted: 15 May 2017, 09:17
by merse btpir
threelittlepiglets wrote: 15 May 2017, 08:58 The truth of the matter is that without descent owners who don't mind investing or attributing to a big boys 'toy' (football club) then TUFC is what it is. Long gone are the days that you probably remember well... we will struggle like many others, I and others just think its better to be united as fans and not against each other. I wont quote directly to particular posts but I think you get the gist of it.

Oh, and appreciating the fact that the ground decision will not progress until or beyond the quoted date, we now HAVE... offers to players, season ticket sales AND pre-season friendlies... are these not a few of the small things that you were associating with the demise of the club because we didn't have them? mmmmmmm
Those 'small' things are the very relevant things that were not out in the public domain when that post was made and it could be argued were only gradually made public after that FACT was pointed out....

'Being united as fans and not against each other' is patently NOT the utopia you paint; it is the realisation that there is more to the agenda than merely bank rolling a failing football club for nothing but altruistic reasons. Just as Parliament has two opposing sides offering their opinions from different sides of the same floor, so does any healthy organisation need those who see things from a different angle otherwise the whole entity is dead, sterile and heading for closure.

Again; this thread is on the subject of expectations for next season and you are trying to divert from that by making pointless remarks about the early contributions to an entirely different thread.....when those remarks were made, season ticket sales AND pre-season friendlies had not been put in the public domain and well you know it!

Expectations for next season

Posted: 15 May 2017, 11:25
by Southampton Gull
:goodpost:

Expectations for next season

Posted: 15 May 2017, 11:54
by tomogull
Merse - your long diatribe above which I haven't ploughed through (life's too short) doesn't answer my response. Now put the money where your mouth is - what is Kevin Nicholson's budget in £££s for next season, and to make it easy for you, tell us in £££s just two National League sides that have smaller budgets than what Nicho is working on.

Expectations for next season

Posted: 15 May 2017, 12:04
by Southampton Gull
I could answer that question, tomo. I'm pretty sure Merse could too but what would be the point? You couldn't prove we were right or wrong and neither could we without getting somebody into trouble. If you choose not to believe something then that's totally your right but that kind of objection has never put me off passing on certain information to other fans and I doubt it will stop Merse either.

Expectations for next season

Posted: 15 May 2017, 12:19
by tomogull
Southampton Gull wrote: 15 May 2017, 12:04 I could answer that question, tomo. I'm pretty sure Merse could too but what would be the point? You couldn't prove we were right or wrong and neither could we without getting somebody into trouble. If you choose not to believe something then that's totally your right but that kind of objection has never put me off passing on certain information to other fans and I doubt it will stop Merse either.
Okay, fair comment. But I tend to take more notice of what you post than someone who told us Steve Tully was about to be appointed manager when GI took over, that ALL United players contracts ended at the end of April and that Nicho would go at the end of the season.

Expectations for next season

Posted: 15 May 2017, 13:04
by merse btpir
tomogull wrote: 15 May 2017, 11:54Merse - your long diatribe above which I haven't ploughed through (life's too short) doesn't answer my response. Now put the money where your mouth is - what is Kevin Nicholson's budget in £££s for next season, and to make it easy for you, tell us in £££s just two National League sides that have smaller budgets than what Nicho is working on.
That sort of response is that of a clown ~ you must have the attention span of a gnat ~ read the bloody thing and the answer is there as regards Nicholson's budget.

Whilst your primary objective is just to disrespect and antagonise; don't expect reasoned debate as that is obviously wasted on such as you who choose not to read posts properly.