Torquay United Fans Forum

That is a crucial win, never did I think that I would be so ecstatic over a hard fought 1-0 win over Southport, but the longer you go without winning, the harder it is to break that run so well done to the players, the continually magnificent away support and most of all to Nicho for his first win as a manager.

Obviously not getting carried away but it's a start, and it also makes Southport one of those teams we can keep below us if results continue to approve.

Most pleasing aspect for me is the clean sheet. We have been conceding goals, soft goals, at an alarming rate, today should hopefully give a few of the lads a much needed shot in the arm. It's a good base to build on. It's taken a while, so lets just bask in that winning feeling, if only for tonight!

Onwards and upwards.

We just have to get behind the new appointment, whoever it is. It's as simple as that.

What's the alternative? Throw toys out of the pram? Boycott? Predict the apocalypse before the man has even stepped foot onto the training pitch? All those things will just be contributing to the problem.

We get who we get, who whatever pauce amount of money we do have allows us to get. If we're writing the new man off before he gets his feet under the desk then we might as well chuck the chains around the gates at Plainmoor, it amounts to the same thing.

Personally, I will be pleased with anyone. Why anyone would risk their reputation and come and give us a go God only knows, so fair play for having the balls to take it on.

Just get behind the lads.

I agree with you, Dave. It's refreshing to go to Plainmoor and see some exciting, attacking football, Last season there were some matches were we couldn't muster a shot at goal. Greavsie has done well to create an attacking minded team, anybody who came to watch us for the first time yesterday would definitely be up for a return visit on that showing.

I did not mean to come across as overly critical in my last posting, I think Greavsie is doing as good a job as anyone reasonably could have expected with the meagre resources at his disposal. I don't think another man, experienced or otherwise, could do much better.

He put 6 below par performer/high wage earners on the transfer list in order to free up some more budget, he received no interest in any of those 6, that immediately put him 2 steps backwards. He was lumbered with the same defence that looked so fragile last season, to compensate he brought in 3 or 4 high quality forward players to gamble on the fact that we will score more than we will concede. If he were to gerrymander the boundaries the other way and strengthen the defence and then rely on nicking the odd goal here or there with substandard strikers; well I don't think I could cope with that sort of football 3 years in a row.

Cameron, still on another year, has underwhelmed all season. Cheap options Yeoman and Thompson aren't trusted to start but aren't given enough pitch time to become effective squad players. All in all I think Greavsie has done brilliantly to get together a team that on their day can compete with anyone. Lathrope and Nicholson might well be better than others at the club but as their contracts had ran out, they were dispensable. I can see clearly now, why Greavsie has done what he's had to do

In any case , this still isn't the time to look into Greavsies management too deeply, we are still carrying a lot of baggage from the previous management. Players who under performed in League two and are still of little use now. Next season when the squad is fully Hargreaves' own is the true time to judge and if his eye for solid signings in Young, Bowman, Briscoe and Richards is anything to go by, I would hope he can build a more consistent, cohesive starting 11. The crux, however, will be if we can keep hold of those aforementioned.

Think going forward we are dynamic and exciting, when on form Young, Briscoe and Bowman are all far too good for this league. I think we are slightly unbalanced at the moment by Cameron being off key for a number of weeks now. His natural urge is to cut inside onto his strong left foot, I would like to see him mix it up more and take the outside but his right foot just isn't strong enough to do so. Would have liked to have seen him and Ajala switch wings yesterday if only for a bit of unpredictability.

Defensively I have massive concerns, we are too cavalier going forward, fine and dandy if you take your chances, but wide open on the counter attack if caught in possession. I don't think our wingers offer much in terms of tracking back which has been a massive problem for our 2 already weak full backs all season. Berry is a massive step up on Tonge but like Cruise on the other side he was caught miles out of position on a couple of occasions, when on the back foot their propensity to show attackers inside has led to problems. Show them down the line and you have a chance of breaking the attack up.

Our two centre backs have not played alongside each other for a long time so it will take a bit of time to get some understanding between them. Couple that with the fact both are haphazard and error prone, basic mistakes such as backing in, raising hands, shoves in the back, jumping in studs showing (Pearce yesterday) it's no wonder we struggle to keep clean sheets.

After a couple of dismal seasons entertainment wise I don't want to see the fluid, expansive play compromised by adding another midfielder in to the mix in order to acquiesce Young and Richards' exciting reckless abandon but if we have serious aspirations of getting out of this league I think we need to rein in the adventure a bit and seek a way of protecting a very delicate back four.

We have shown that scoring goals isn't a problem, but sometimes scoring 3 goals in a match hasn't been enough. It's clean sheets we need, and fast. The money isn't there to bring in a new back five so we need to find a way to concede less with what we have at our disposal now.

Wouldn't blame Rice for the second goal personally. I think that at the height that it hits the net questions should be asked of the wall, couple with a slight deflection I think blaming the goalkeeper would be harsh. I would however point a finger at the third goal, a very weak punch in the build up when a catch looked an easier option led to the pressure being cranked up on us.

A curious game really, FGR looked incredibly poor in the first half hour and we really should have been out of sight. Their first, beautifully created by a superb cross in, stopped us in our tracks and we never achieved the same fluency in our play thereafter. At 3-1 we should really have gone on to win at a canter but losing Bowman with some 35 minutes to go really cost us some impetus because wilfully though he tried O'Archie just couldn't get into the match.

In the end we dropped too deep defensively and gave FGR's midfield far too much room to operate. Even at this level, if you drop your standards for 10 minutes you get punished.

In any event, we might still have plundered a winner late on, as Young once again drove us on, but in the end I went away thinking that a draw was possibly fair for a game that had a decent ebb and flow to it.

My favourite ever Plainmoor goal is Steve McCall's goal against Scarborough in the playoffs in 1998- and you can find it on youtube. He puts it right in the postage stamp and the keeper gets absolutely nowhere near it. I've already come to terms with the fact that i'll never see a night like that at Plainmoor ever again. Magical.

I remember Gibbs' goal mentioned, the bright spot in a really dull match. That season Gurney and Gibbs scored about 15 between them and I remember Gurney scoring from distance against Shrewsbury right at the start of our 8 game winning run.

You could pick any number of David Graham's goals, not just a great goalscorer but a scorer of great goals. The one I remember most clearly was, I think, against Bury, a first time volley from over his shoulder from a really acute angle which lobbed the goalkeeper, it was a delicate and sumptuous moment of craftsmanship from the man I still consider the best marksman I have seen.

Eunan's goal against Argyle is a classic, a moment of genius and I would also include Nicho's last gasp strike against Barnet from the same season- if just for the theatre of it.

Oh dear!

For a match that had seven goals there was precious little quality today, certainly not much from open play. All seven goals could have been avoided by better organisation defensively, every time there was a set piece you felt like it was going to lead to a goal.

After a particularly lacklustre first 20 minutes I thought we had done all the hard work by getting 2-1 in front and from then on it should be routine, not so; the equaliser on half time absolutely killed us, such a soft goal to concede too.

We started the second half in much the same manner as the first and even after Ajala was sent off for two fairly clumsy, yet innocuous, challenges I still felt we would have just enough to nick it, once again you just can't legislate for the poor defending that led to goals 3 and 4, just a rank bad day at the office sadly, and they happen, that it happened against one of the poorer teams in the league is irrelevant. There's no logic to it, similarly the case when we turned Rochdale over last year.

I would hope that we've got all our mistakes out of our system all at once, that we forget about today and all its deficiencies and we move on quickly and put it right straightaway on Tuesday. The longer the winning runs and clean sheets continued the harder it would have been to keep it going with expectation rising and teams playing purely to nullify us. Now we can start again with freedom. I hope today was just a blip but with the majority of the top half to play it was undoubtedly an untimely slip up.

No room for manoeuvre in the squad so Downes and Ajala out, Pearce and Cameron in and happy we have an opportunity to rectify it on Tuesday.

Final word for Downes, utterly stupid and completely reckless, no doubt borne of frustration. As obvious a red card as you will see and sadly for him he's opened the door to Pearce.

A most strange day.

Graeme, have spoken to Matt, check your PMs for your route to getting your money back.

Alan Knill's job was not made easier by seeing his transfer budget slashed dramatically just days after he was appointed, and the departures of key players, and experienced pros, Saah, Jarvis and Howe also left him with serious voids to fill.

However, in the previous season we had suffered from a lack of goals scored, so to leave the eventual 'marquee' signings of Ball and Hawley up until the very last minutes of pre-season was always going to be a huge risk, and so it proved. Relying on them to score goals is one thing, to get them settled into a new team and unfamiliar surroundings is another.

AK did not help himself by suggesting he'd need 10 games to judge the squad. It is a huge gamble to take in the current football climate, especially when, with our tight financial restrictions, it would prove difficult to fix what he deemed to be going wrong. The first 10 matches, as it turned out, were lacklustre, characterised again by a lack of goals. That 20 minute spell at Sixfields being the anomaly and also the hope some held on to that, given time, AK could get it right.

So the 10 games had passed. Harding and Cameron had not settled in, goalscoring was once again an issue, it didn't look like the current formation would provide the misfiring Hawley, Benyon and Ball with enough chances. Our porous defence looked disjointed and prone to error. This is where Knill called for back up in the shape of young loanees, being all we could afford, and sadly, if anything, performances got worse and goal scoring issues worsened from here on in as selection fast became devoid of continuity.

Amongst all the chaos, 2 players who, to this day, I believe would have made all the difference were cast aside. Lathrope and Yeoman, players who he had trusted at the business end of the season prior, and who had delivered under the biggest of pressure. Whilst his all round game may not fully be developed (only a handful of football league starts in his armoury) there is no denying that Yeoman knows how to put the ball into the back of the net. Hindsight is as wonderful as it is terrible, but I am adamant that he would have scored a dozen goals this year had he been given the proper chance his good work last year merited.

The board were right to sack Alan Knill, the first half of the season had been a disaster and morale was at an all time low. He seemed to have lacked the support of the remnants of the Ling reign, but also the confidence of those had had brought in during the summer. Fans were boycotting in protest to the lack of spark on the pitch. By his own admission, when sacked, there was not a lot more he could do with the materials he had at his disposal.

That said, when he left, our position was not fatal. There was plenty of time, and plenty of 'six pointers' for a new man to come in revitalise the club- backed with money, presumably unavailable to AK, to help make the escape possible. Alan Knill should not be held culpable for the events of January to April. The fans wanted him gone, he left, many got their wish, chapter closed on January 2nd.

The first half of the season sewed the seeds and set the tone to what was to come, but mistakes were also made elsewhere in the second half of the season, mistakes that can not be attributed to Mr Knill in any way. He is vehemently a contributing factor to this catastrophic season, but making him an overwhelming scapegoat is a step too far.

I'm going because that reprobate, Andy, owes me money! I was always going to this one, with the hope of survival destroyed inside me weeks ago I travel with no hope or expectation. Win, lose or draw, regardless of relegation or that one final reprieve, I am just going to enjoy the day, after all it could be the last away day in the football league for a very long time. COYY!

I am not going tomorrow Andy, but after my epistle last night spreading perhaps a bit too much more gloom than I intended I felt it reasonable to counteract that by trying to glean positivity from the last couple of signings. We are in a massive mess, but at least the club are trying to rectify that by getting more bodies in. At this precise moment, in isolation, that's all we can ask and they should be applauded for that.

Following my criticism last night of the club apparently not addressing our striking issues I feel it necessary to hold my hands up and commend the club for getting a man in. The budget only allows for youth loanees (if that!) so at least we can take solace in the fact he is from a premier league club and hopefully academy trained. We have done the best that our resources can possibly manufacture.

He may not be the answer, we can only hope he is, but after asking the question whether the club is doing all they can to make a difference, it would appear that in working right up to the deadline in order to sign another player, that they are.

Let's hope the new man makes a difference, starting with a positive performance tomorrow!

The journey home from York was a long and painful one. Parking problems meant we could not leave Bootham Crescent until 10pm, roadwork problems meant I did not get home until 6am. That 8 hours gave me ample time to try and sum up the feelings of resignation, despair, dejection and utter horror that have incrementally been getting more potent over the last 18 months.

Martin Ling earned the right to be cut a bit of slack during his second season. When he walked in through the door late in the summer of 2011 no-one gave him a prayer, he was ridiculed, labelled the cheap option and derided as a poor choice. Had it not been for a last minute Crewe equaliser chances are we would have been promoted automatically- a minor miracle considering the situation he inherited and the limited squad he utilised all season.

The following season Martin sold several key players and raised 500k in the process, money which, at no point, was he allowed to use to replace those he had sold (apart from 20k towards Bodin.) Regardless, I remember remarking at the time that the first two home matches of the season (Cheltenham and Rochdale) were amongst the best I had ever seen in terms of quality and excitement and that Martin Ling's greatest qualities lay in building a team ethic, a team spirit regardless of how limited his resources might be.

As the season wore on, injuries began to take their toll, Martin's approach of trying "trying not to lose" was starting to irritate those who prefer the "all out for a win" approach and the first few words of discontent started to find their way from Bristow's Bench insidiously into the head of a manager who still had us in and around the play-offs. As I said, considering his first season, I believed he deserved some slack. Many believe the biggest cracks appeared in defeat to Harrogate, a poor result no doubt, but lets not forget that we missed a hatful of chances in that game. 'The club does not budget for cup runs' we were told in the aftermath, so surely no problem?

Into the busy Christmas schedule and Ling was without Morris, Macklin, Lathrope, Jarvis, Mansell was suspended, Howe walking a continual disciplinary tightrope, Saah would get sent off at Bradford. Still Torquay remained in the top half, Martin Ling needed reinforcements, he was told the money wasn't there. Money, which had instead been spent on a Grandstand that would have serious ramifications on pitch drainage and a training ground that we still haven't used to this day. As the results started to take a turn for the worse, the voices of discontent grew louder. I have no idea how Martin's stress related illness manifested itself, it may have had nothing to do with TUFC or football at all, but clearly these circumstances weren't helping. People might suggest that Football is a harsh environment and you need a strong spine to bear the brunt of it, I just think people had short memories of what he was capable of. Sometimes certain people need an arm round their shoulder, telling them they are doing alright, Martin did that a lot for his players, I don't think anyone did it enough for him.

People say we were too defensive under Ling, that our football was boring to watch, I disagree. A system hinging on retaining and keeping possession is always going to bear more fruit and create more chances than a formulaic strategy of continually hitting the wings or hitting it long. Our problem was not converting the 2 or 3 golden chances we created when in the ascendency and then being hit by a sucker punch by a team chucking everything at us in the last 10 minutes. The main problem being that Martin Ling was not given enough funding to fully replace his two star turns; Olejnik and O'Kane.

Alan Knill offered his services to a team in free-fall, a team without their leader, with no structure to its day to day functioning. I felt sorry for Sean Taylor who was so far out of his depth, after the Aldershot match I think any appointment would have been a step in the right direction. As interim manager Mr Knill did enough. His signing of Labadie was inspired, and Chappel also made a difference in a couple of home games. We won a few games, but some of the defeats were as bad as, if not worse, than any that had preceded it. The recalls of Labadie and Chappel were hammer blows at the time, but the seven crucial points Mr Knill accrued in the last 3 games of the season were achieved with a team fully of Martin Ling's making.

The outpouring of relief of another great escape, coupled with the goodwill of a manager working only on expenses for built a groundswell of momentum pushing Mr Knill firmly into the limelight. Not only was he the favourite man for the manager's seat, it would also appear that he was the only man for the hot-seat, as far as I am aware there was no interview process offered to any other candidate. The way the managerial change happened still leaves a bad taste in my mouth to this day. Its not the sort of way businesses should operate in my opinion. Some will say that there was no way that Martin Ling could have come back given many thought of him as mentally fragile, but I would still suggest that his first season earned him the right of a second chance. The other argument being, as we've starkly learnt twice now, that, if you can afford to pay off his contract, you could have afforded him the transfer fees he needed to improve his squad.

No matter how it was deduced, or by whom, the decision was made that Alan Knill would take over and as manager of my football team he would get my full support. We draw a line under season 2012/13, we move on and we are promised it won't happen again.

Pre-season is always an interesting time, players come and players go. There is conjecture on forums on who is good, who is not, who is better than who. It is all opinion and no-one can really judge until we see them in the flesh. Alan Knill's football philosophy appears solid, sound. We will play with an antiquated 4-4-2 with two exciting wide men, two top signings up front. We have chased Karl Hawley all summer, Mr Knill's no.1 target and he is delighted to have him. Krystian Pearce is a coup for this club, we have beaten a number of clubs to his signature. Ashley 'best finisher at the club' Yeoman has built on his goal of the year against Morecambe with more goals in pre-season, this surely, will be his year.

We open our season with an unconvincing draw against Wimbledon, equalising in the last minute courtesy from an Aaron Downes header from a precise Nial Thompson cross. Some forum members are derided for their opinion that this team will struggle to score goals. I am one who chooses to ignore this surely premature observation and see enough during a stirring second half performance against Morecambe to suggest that given a bit of time this team is showing nascent signs of quality.

We secure our first win of the season in our next away match at Sixfields. We are battered for 60 minutes but turn on the quality for 15 minutes. That 15 minutes is really rather good, excellent in fact and if we can reproduce that intensity, incisiveness and speed on the break then we will be fine this season. The trouble is that we haven't. That 15 minutes has been the pinnacle of our play all season, Jordan Chapell showed the goal-scoring desire and calmness to finish in front of goal that day that our strikers have, to a man, failed to show. We have since shown some decent play to create chances, but have had no-one anticipating the final ball, no-one to finish them off. Take out the 4-2 win against Cheltenham (gifted first two goals) and our goal-scoring return at Plainmoor in the first half of the season has been pitiful.

Mr Knill said he would use the first ten matches to judge the standard of his squad. He can't have been too impressed with what he had assembled because we began to see the rotating door policy at TQ1 in full swing with loan signings coming and going by the week. I have nothing against a loan signing or two to bolster resources but when you have 4 or 5 of them in your starting XI I believe you need start having serious reservations about the quality of the manager's recruitment in the summer. Rumours were abound that his promised budget had been drastically cut, and if that being the case then he has cause for sympathy, but if nothing is made public then I am afraid the manager is the man in the firing line.

Mr Ling set his team out defensively in order not to lose, to get to 70 minutes and not be losing, to still be in the game, still have a chance of nicking it. By and large, Mr Ling's defensive record as boss was very good, Mr Knill's sadly was quite the opposite. Continual individual calamities led to goals conceded, matches against Fleetwood, Rochdale, Burton and Scunthorpe we were outplayed and offered little by way of opposition. At Wycombe and Accrington we turned winning positions into losing results thanks to sloppy mistakes. At Newport and Wycombe, the manager's transfer policies were once again called into question with makeshift backlines including Krystian Pearce who played through a serious health scare. A win at Bury was a rare bright spot, we showed resilience in the face of horrific weather conditions, we won the match but it was still unconvincing.

By now it was obvious that we would be embroiled in another relegation scrap. Players who had been signed with big reputations had been replaced by rookie loanees, players who had played a big part in last season's survival had been jettisoned out on loan. Crowds at Plainmoor were dropping to a new low since we returned to the football league. Our plight was summed up when a speculative 30 yard strike for Nathan Craig (in a rare cameo appearance) was routinely fielded by a goalkeeper and the whole of Plainmoor, in unison, erupted like we had just sealed promotion, basking in the joy of seeing a shot on target in 170 minutes of football. Off the field events were starting to stir derision too, an air raid siren being played at the match nearest to remembrance day reeked of poor decision making, it was enough for the matchday announcer to resign in protest. The insistence of the police of a 'Big 5' ticket scheme did little to help dwindling crowds either, attendances against those "big 5" have all been pathetic and a fraction of what we could have otherwise expected had it not been for outside interference. Nothing was going for us this season.

During the long journey home from Scunthorpe I was dejected, I could see nothing but relegation under Alan Knill. I know no-one sets out to gets a team relegated or perform badly, and at our financially stricken club managers will often have to operate with one or both hands tied behind their back, but not only were the results not good enough, but the performances failed to meet the standard too. Too many players, it became apparent, had lost faith in his methods, those he had brought in during the summer had underperformed or been replaced, others were still on loan. You can normally gauge a season by the number of players used. Our squad was on the large side. I was resigned to relegation, I did not join in the insult-slinging in the Glanford away end, its not generally my style, but I couldn't criticise those that did. I was told that we couldn't afford to sack Mr Knill so I just got on with turning up to matches and just hoped he would find a formula that worked.

Gritty wins against Southend and Dagenham appeared to show the first signs of recovery. Both carried a hint of luck and could have gone either way but, crucially, 6 points made our situation seem a lot better, and in Marquis, now leading the line in a throwback to Martin Ling's 4-5-1 formation, we had a striker who finally was both a focal point to our attack, and a decent finisher. Sadly Marquis got injured in our very next game and as is so often the case those little things turn into big ravenous problems. Those Bristol and Exeter games back to back can be summed up by a tale of two penalties: Marquis sends the Rovers keeper the wrong way as cool as you like, Hawley steps up against Exeter and I feared the worst. I turned to my brother (an exile seeing his first game in two years) and said 'he'll miss this' and sure enough he makes it far too easy for the keeper to save. Had we scored that goal it may have been different, as it was those huge gaping defensive errors came creeping back in again and Exeter won at a canter in the end.

If there's a bona-fide way of turning the crowd against you it is losing local derbies. The Exeter match was unfortunate as we did dominate for long periods, but again fell foul of not being able to score in a million years, the match at Argyle sadly fell into the abject surrender category with catastrophic errors at the back once again being the architects of the downfall. Those two results sadly were always going to supersede the achievement of the 7 points gained directly before them and walking out of a poisonous away end on new years day the writing was on the wall. His interview on the radio surmised a man defeated by the limitations of managing Torquay United. A man who had tried his best but it hadn't worked out for him. The lackadaisical performance on the pitch illustrated a lack of understanding towards the manager's methods, a lot of those players however, also looked like they had zero morale or confidence.

It was no surprise when Mr Knill parted company with the club the following day. It is never nice to see a man lose his job but in the immediate aftermath of his removal it felt like a dark cloud was being lifted from over Plainmoor. Again, one can argue that if the money is there to pay off one coaching staff's contracts and then install another, surely you would be better off giving the manager said cash to spend on the team. I happen to think though that the feeling of despondency and fan vote of 'no confidence' after the defeat at Home Park was insurmountable and maybe even his poor recruitment in the summer had worked against him.

Whilst a thorough recruitment process was underway Geoff Harrop was put in temporary charge and proceeded to treat the home fans to the best performance of the season. He recalled those cast out on loan and went back to basics. The re-signing of Joss Labadie, so instrumental in last year's escape bid added to the feel good factor, But for a wonder goal from a bloke who will never do it again, it would have been a very welcome three points. I must admit I was a little surprised by the appointment of Chris Hargreaves given his experience but was won over almost immediately by a consummate and professional performance at Wimbledon. That day felt like the start of a new season and a taste of things to come. What he lacked in experience I thought he might be able to replace in sheer inspiration of being a contemporary Torquay United playing legend. Few who were present that day could forecast the troubles to come.

The English weather put paid to our next few home games, drainage having been compromised since Bristow's Bench was built. Crucially this postponed our home match against a ,then manager-less, Northampton side, we were unable to build on the positive atmosphere and momentum built by Chris' first win and indeed had to wait two weeks between matches. A win at Portsmouth again added to Hargreaves' credentials at being able to inspire and instil a strong team spirit and at this point it was hard to see how the bottom could fall out. But it could.

The defeat against bottom side Northampton was a foreshadowing of what was to come. A battered Plainmoor pitch was not conducive to good football and Northampton played the conditions better racing into a 2 goal lead, albeit with a bit of luck after decapitating Billy Bodin (in high spirits after a goal in the previous game) in the process and getting away with it. Some will look at the psychological element of Alan Knill getting the upper hand over the club who had sacked him, in my opinion we lost to a desperately poor footballing outfit and as that was the first that many at Plainmoor will have seen of Hargreaves and TUFC mach 2, it would have been very hard to gain any momentum from there on in.

Still more matches were falling foul of the relentless winter rain, meanwhile other clubs were picking up points and starting to build a gap between us and safety. It was at this point that the rotating door policy was in full swing on the team bus, on the dressing room door and at reception, sadly the budget in Hargreaves' war-chest only stretched as far as rookie loanees, some got on the field for 10 minutes, some didn't even make the bench. None, if we're being honest were what we needed at the time and the first signs of Hargreaves' immaturity as a football league manager were starting to show. It is not Hargreaves' fault, I maintain that even up to now, he was thrust into a difficult, near impossible, situation and has show he hasn't the experience or contacts needed to sort this mess out. An older head, either as boss or as an advisor, was needed and I have been as guilty as anyone else for naively believing that Chris Hargreaves could keep us up on inspiration, enthusiasm and love for the club alone.

Chesterfield away, and many predicted a complete shellacking, the truth was that we were comfortably and justifiably leading the match 1-0 and then bad fortune reared its ugly head. Poke makes a one in a million mistake and that's another 3 points we throw down the drain. We later find that Joss Labadie has been accused of biting and treat it as a but of a laugh due to the lack of concrete evidence. In hindsight though its no laughing matter regardless of how the disciplinary panel came to their conclusion. Biting is wrong and disgusting and reeks of a player suffering with ill-discipline. Whatever motivated him to even square up to the player in the first place we might never find out, it could have been borne out of a number of frustrations building up inside a struggling player playing in a struggling team, we'll never know. And we're still none the wiser why we're paying him a wage whilst he's suspended for 10 matches for a moment of madness he had no need to get involved with.

I thought the confidence we could take from the performance would see us in good stead but sadly it was the Accrington match that followed that broke the camel's back for me. You will not see a poorer representation of a professional football team than the Accrington team that took to that pitch, and we rolled over and let them have the 3 points having negated to pose anything by way of a meaningful goal threat for 90% of the match. For 15 minutes solid we had them camped in their defensive third and we still did not have the nous or wherewithal to create a goal-scoring chance. The effort could not be faulted, we just did not possess the quality to unlock a very poor side. It has been the story for the majority of the season. There are, perhaps generously, 3 decent sides in this division, and the rest are a much of a muchness, ranging from average to poor. The fact that we're bottom of that lot says it all. Recent defeats to Fleetwood, Newport and I am reliably told also at Cheltenham all continue this formula, lots of effort and bluster, no meaningful chances created, no goals scored, waiting for the ensuing defensive calamity and hey presto, another defeat.

After the Accrington game I promised myself to remove the emotional aspect of watching Torquay matches, and so I have. In the 5 home matches since, I have stood on my usual step, the same as the last 15 years, and remained ambivalent to proceedings. Not got excited when we score, not got upset when we concede. Perhaps some call it going through the motions, but I prefer not getting my hopes up. I turn up, laugh at the calamities and absurdities that only league two football can provide and then I go home and try largely to forget about it. The only time I broke emotion was when Ashley Yeoman scored the last minute winner. I have been championing him all season and whilst 1 goal is not a vindication for automatic starting place from beginning of the season all the way through, his poaching instinct can not be questioned. He might not have made as much of a difference as I believe he would, but having spent most of the season elsewhere, and lower down the pecking order than any number of youth loanees you care to mention we will never find out.

The 2 recent home wins were nice little reminders of what winning felt like, but to me that's all I could allow them to be. There's nothing worse than getting your hopes up only to have them drowned a little further down the line. Both those winning goals had their own elements of luck to them any how, and i am not totally sure whether either victory was merited, we played well in stages but not for long enough. I guess nothing makes sense to me at the moment when trying to work out whether the league table is genuinely based on merit this season.

Entering the Newport match you could say I had a tiny bit of hope following the Bury win. This was extinguished straight away when Zebroski scored and misery compounded with Goodwin shown his marching orders minutes later. I still can't decide whether it was merited, i am not entirely sure it's worth worrying about at this stage, it was inconsequential. Goodwin is a young lad trying his best for us in the absence of senior professionals of the required standard, he can not be blamed for jumping in in a way that demonstrates his lack of experience at professional level. We would have struggled to have scored with 11 men, the continually enigmatic and half fit Bodin puts in the best cross of the season at the last minute and the ball is headed at the only place where the goalkeeper can save it. It just about summed our season up.

And so to York. When the fixtures were released I said I had to do this fixture, solely because it was such a ridiculous proposition. My desire to see through this arrangement has waned somewhat the nearer we got to it, but even so it would be memorable either way. Team line-up was the first surprise, Thompson in for a start despite not getting a game at Worcester? Keeping Chapell at home in the process? Nothing really makes sense to me at the moment and really emphasises a manager who has little or no faith in the majority of his resources. Once again the early goal killed us really. Bit of slack play led to our downfall, seen it all before. Lots of possession thereafter but no penetration and no guilt edged chances, no one taking the game by the scruff of the neck and having a shot from 25 yards. Wide open spaces at the back on the counter attack that better teams would exploit. All the hall-marks of the season there in one 90 minute microcosm, its just a shame that microcosm is 300 miles from home. There was no vitriol from those that travelled, everyone knew.

The match finishes and the players come over and offer extended thanks for our efforts. It was quite strange actually, they just kept on clapping as if to say 'sorry for being so crap' or maybe 'what the hell are you doing here?' I look around me on the minibus and everyone knows, everyone is resigned to what will surely happen in the coming weeks. These are all decent people, all dedicated fans, there is no anger or resentment for what they have been put through, just despair and disappointment. Travelling is not compulsory, you don't get a medal for doing so, you do it through love for the club and with good intentions. It just hurts so much when what you have gone to support has been a let down.

Today's developments have continued to astound the punters. I haven't commented on here about Enoch Showumni, but within 5 minutes of his home debut I said he was terrible, atrocious. He has done nothing to dissuade me from my original thinking since and can trap the ball further than I can pass it. It is confusing that after such a fanfare was made of his arrival that we just let him go without a whimper and that we still don't try and replace him with a striker. In his 5 games he has scored precisely 0 goals and led to the creation of precisely 0 goals, and that is the crux of the matter. 'Enoch has signed, there is some hope' turns out, as many predicted, that he wasn't the much lauded saviour and he has actually done worse than the other 200 strikers also tried out in our team this season. Argyle have shown the merit of pushing the boat out and signing a centre forward with proper pedigree, take out Reid's goals and Argyle are an abject embarrassment to football and would be 5 points worse off than us.

That we haven't pooled all our resources throughout the campaign and concentrated on recruiting a man guaranteed to knock in 20 goals this season is the underlying reason why we are going down this year. If you can get a consistent starting XI with a focal point of a striker who you can rely on to find the net on a regular basis then you generally will do ok. That we have used upwards of 40 players this season and our top scorer with 5 has neither scored since October, nor played since January speaks volumes for the plight we're in.

We have however signed a new left back, bit inexperienced mind you, and he is a bit injured, but apart from that he'll be ready to go, just hope we haven't lost two more matches by then. The club should be busting a gut to avoid relegation, if you're going to announce that season tickets for next season are going to be the same price and offering 'fantastic value' then you owe it those people to ensure the level of football they will be watching next season is worth shelling out for by doing whatever you can to avoid the drop. Other clubs are signing decent options, we simply, are not. I don't want to bash the new lad, it won't be his fault and i'll clap him onto the pitch but I am almost entirely sure he is not the answer to our problems.

I am not going to Southend, It will be the first match I have missed by choice for 3 seasons, I can not justify spending the money on the day out, and I will be working on Saturday to recoup the money I wasted by going to York. I can not bring myself to go to Exeter or Bristol for fear of them having a field day sending us down. I am normally more positive than this but all the thrust and vim has been sucked out of me by a disastrous 18 months on and off the field.

Some of the decision making has been akin to the chaotic Roberts/Kubik reign. You could justify how poor we were by the fact that Roberts was a charlatan hell bent on asset stripping us for his own financial gain, the rot he left us in could not be turned round. The consortium are fans, with the fan's interests at heart, or so we are told. I am sure there are some genuine, honest, hard-working people on our board, but I am equally sure there are parasites and malingerers too. Stories of power struggles and lack of investment do little to arrest the fears of fans that their club might not be in safe hands. Whilst I do not believe dirty laundry should be aired to the fans, I do think we have a right to a united boardroom pulling in the right direction. So many rumours fly about concerning who is accountable for what decision.

The board deserve immense credit for saving the club in the first instance, by making smart decisions that not only gave us our football league status back but saw us battling at the right end of the league within two years after promotion. It seems since then there has been a lot of backslapping and high-fives of a job well done, but also a period of stagnation. We might not ever know who truly is to blame for the malaise we are in, maybe that is for the best. It is just a damn shame that all that hard work and good feeling has been undone in a crazy 18 months were the wheels have fallen off. New investment appears to have dried up, board member's appearance at matches dwindling by the week, fans generally left in the dark at what is going on. In that time attendances have plummeted, and the removal of two experienced football managers at great cost has now seen us careering head first back to the non-league. I do not blame Hargreaves, he can only truly be rated on how he goes about a difficult job next season. The rot had well and truly manifested itself before he joined the asylum.

I will not be getting a season ticket next season, not even in the extremely unlikely event that we pull off the greatest of great escapes. I am fully expecting to be a conference team next season, and I don't think the club deserves my finance throughout the summer as they did not use my same finance very wisely last season. I can take being a conference club, its a bit crap, but I can take losing, that's not a problem. The manner in which we have imploded is the cause of my ambivalence for next season. I can pick but only a handful of decent memories from the last 18 months, far too few when you give up the majority of your time to the club you love.

The club needs a massive overhaul next season, cut out the deadwood at every level. We need to take a long hard look at ourselves and decide what we want to be, if we really want to be a professional league outfit again then we have to take harsh but strong steps in the right direction. We need a definite leader, not only of the team, but of the club at board level. There have been far too many people taking advantage of TUFC's good nature. Its about time we removed sentiment, made some hard decisions and drag the club from the doldrums back to where I believe we genuinely belong: a properly functioning league two outfit.

I will be around next season, its the only way I know how, I imagine i'll go to a fair few away games, new places to visit, and attend a fair few home games too. I've been trapped inside a TUFC bubble nonstop for 4 seasons now and these last 18 months have taken their toll on me. Its time I get out of that bubble for a while and see what else there is on the outside. But don't worry, i'll be back. I love TUFC and always will, I just don't like them at the moment.



(if anyone actually read all that, I salute you)

Hi Gullscorer,

Its irrelevant who is in charge of that ship, the name of the club is still the same. Plymouth Argyle FC failed to pay their bills some years ago, Plymouth Argyle FC are reaping the rewards for not having to pay what they owe in full some years later. Yes, well done for James Brent for not being as useless as his predecessor, and well done to Sheridan for getting his team half-way up an abysmal table but to compare their season with ours is pointless. For a start they get double the crowds and have ten times the catchment area as us.

Just because some new bloke has taken over the club, it doesn't mean we should forget the wrongs of their past. If I had re-laid their pitch and received £70 for what I had quoted to be a £100,000 (mathematicians put me right) job, and then had to sell my house and declare myself bankrupt on the back of that, I wouldn't let bygones be bygones because someone new is in charge, it doesn't work like that. Plymouth Argyle might have changed their boardroom, but their name has not changed.

You may want to act friendly with our two neighbours, that's your prerogative and I wouldn't criticise for you for that. Me? I think they are both morally bankrupt for the damage they have caused honest, hardworking tradesmen and renaissances shouldn't be heralded as deserved cause for celebration until they can act with a bit more humility and at least try and make good some of the mistakes they have made in the past instead of washing their hands with it.

No doubt PAFC have some sort of 'care in the community' schemes that they proudly state in their programmes and throughout their media, I would suggest trying to make amends to the people they robbed from would be a better way of spending their time.

That's not me being emotional, nor is it me extending my dislike of the club to fit my argument. If, as a club, you are foolish enough to get yourselves into £20 million debt, you should either pay back in full or fold the club and start again with nothing.

If I got ill because of some food served to me by McDonalds, I wouldn't start going back there as soon as they appointed a new store manager, its McDonalds the brand, the entity, that I would have my (pardon the pun) beef with.

So yeah, well done Argyle if you like. After 35 games you are in and around the play-offs of a truly woeful division. Well done. They haven't achieved anything yet, nor is there any indication that they will do so in the coming weeks. It would be interesting to see what would happen if Reid was recalled, I have a pretty strong idea which direction they'd be heading.

Got too big for their boots, made wild, unrealistic ambitions that they couldn't possibly fulfil, entered administration and ended up paying 0.07% of what they owed to the businesspeople they owed it to. Ruined countless lives of honest, hardworking people in the process. Still giving it the big one because they've won a few games in the worst league two division in many a year.

Nope, not having it. Horrible club, haven't really paid their dues for the mistakes they've made in the past, won't learn and will no doubt do it all over again further down the line. Small club with delusions of grandeur. Take Reuben Reid out of the side and they are worse than us. Much rather be little old Torquay and 'always be s**t' than proudly march around with an air of superiority despite having destroyed many local businesses, set fire to a £17 million debt and seemingly get away with it and then have the temerity to laugh at an honest football club like ours for not being able to get by on a shoe-string. We might be useless, and we might go down, but we will do so having paid our bills. That to me, is more important in the overall scheme of things.