Torquay United Fans Forum

I'd start with the shots on target and then find the perscentage of that by goals conceded. You could remove penalties faced as they could skew the result, and if the shots on target was small lets say 5 or less then you could dismiss the shots faced as too small to be statistically significant.

1 Da Silva - tried hard with iffy service
2 Foyo - Liked what I saw and wasn't frightened by having the ball
3 Moxey - for his experience

I think its fair to draw the conclusion on the basis of who is now getting regularly picked provided that they're fit
Halstead
Moxey
Donnellan
Wyatt
Martin
Hall
Lapslie
Jarvis
are first XI selections and the remaining 10 on our books don't. I recognise we can't play two keepers so I think Lovett is OK and also Moyse is too inexperienced to be negative towards but the remaining 8 players if I've counted correctly seem to be not good enough. Is that fair?

For me Southern league Premier isn't challenging enough for these lads. The should be being tested at NLS or NLN level so they y have to play at a level not so far away from the NL level. I fear they're never going to learn the positional sense and decision-making speed/level we need in the Southern League.

The clues GJ gave were that his first name is Ben and he played left wingback

There are 12 games to play and we have 8 points+ to catch up. As the bookies odds show we still have a chance. However, its more likely that our role this season will be to be a spoiler to the other aspirants hopes.

We've put out a scratch side but an opportunity for selected players to show they are not shrinking violets.

It would appear that we've become very predictable, relying on Whitfield for crosses. So opponents work to cut balls from getting to him and then we are toothless. We need a right winger to give us back both options and then allow CLE to take his most effective position. It doesn't need to be Riyad Mahrez, just someone who knows the role and is effective.

Crawley's manager - John Yems. Has a Torquay scouting role on his CV. And doing alright with Crawley.

NL(S) has Maidstone ex EFL

Have Medford-Smith and Bansal-McNulty gone already? I've not seen a mention of them for a couple of weeks.

In the position we find ourselves we've got to have 11 fit players on the pitch who are up for a scrap.

I agree with you but whats the betting that he sticks with his GPS data

As we wait for news of our new signings
Putting yourself in the position of the Johnson brothers, you have to appreciate just how many journeyman footballers there are out there looking for a contract.
Take in the L2, NL, NLS and NLN, Southern League Premier, NPL Premier, and Isthmian League Premier players available on free transfer or have just been released. Add to that players released from academies, U-21 and U-23 squads. Then add players from Scotland, Wales and Ireland. And then EU players. And onto that add other foreign players here looking for contracts. And then there are the players that were already available as free agents. All told the pool maybe 5000 in all.
To hone in on what we need you have to confirm that players meet our person spec
• The players have to have the right levels of fitness
• Demonstrate the organisational knowhow to fit GJs requirements, without needing to be told by the coach from the sidelines
• Taking responsibility, no shrinking violets
• Right levels of consistency such as in positional sense and in decision-making

Then think of the requirements for skill – goalkeeping, defending, wingplay, defensive midfield, creative midfield, striking.
Then disciplinary record, and so on

And then you might have reduced the available pool down to a manageable number. Then you find out which players would possibly move to TUFC, and those that definitely won’t. And those that are outside our pay range. We would expect that GJ would be positively influential in getting players to look at us seriously. And so the 5000 becomes less than 500, and then you are segmenting the very interesting from the quite interesting and the club needs to show more interest and gauge responses.

And then our most likely early signings will be of players wanting to step up to the NL as the recently higher level players won’t want to take a step down until the NL level appears to be the best they can get.

So you can understand why our previous managers have used fairly extensive trials to identify the last few players we are going to offer contracts to, because getting it right is tremendously difficult and it has a massive bearing on how the season turns out.
We wait with great hopes.

After 6 seasons of relegation battles, together with gloom and despondency and general evidence of a club in decline, I still can't believe that we have enjoyed such success this year.

It goes to prove how important at this level, perhaps even more so than at the higher levels, it is to have the right manager,