Torquay United Fans Forum

Enzo wrote: I agree. O'Kane is he kind of player that you could build a team around. His performance at OT was the one bright point of a crap day. He will be the reason that people pay to watch us play

To suggest that selling Billy, O'Kane and Zebs will see us go down is wrong in my opinion. It is what how we replace them that matters. Zebs is a decent League Two player, but at the moment Billy is conference standard with Sunday morning fitness levels. They are replaceable if the correct man and a workable budget is provided.

yellow wrote:I endorse small club syndrome.

It is a lowering of expectations that provides greater satisfaction when we are successful and a sense of proportion when we are not.

If you take it too seriously then TUFC will burn you. When all said and done we are a small club, with small crowds in a footballing backwater.

But we have a passionate and knowledgeable hardcore of support, and a vocal away following that make us what we are.

At the moment we are a league club again. That is success. Just ask Wrexham, Luton, Grimsby, Darlington, York, Mansfield and Cambridge, to name but a few.

numpte wrote:But has Harrop actually added any VALUE since he's been here?

Whats Compo up to these days?

tufcbrett wrote:Keepers

Defenders
Chris Robertson
Mark Ellis
Kevin Nicholson
Lathanial Rowe-Turner

Midfielders
Lee Mansell
Eunan O'kane
Lloyd Macklin
Saul Halpin
Damon Lathrope

Strikers
Billy Kee
Chris Zebroski

Then we got Guy Branston and Danny Stevens which we dont know what there doing?
The we got some of the young boys like Palmer, yeoman and spear?

So with a new manager to come in and a fair few players are needed, times will get better just like everyone else i hope no more is taken and makes it worse for us.

ferrarilover wrote:Thanks Hector, I write all that, at an unfeasibly late hour and I awake upon the morn to find that is your reply.

Was I not clear when I ended my piece with 'the inclusion of one is not to the exclusion of another'?

Matt.

ferrarilover wrote:While I agree with your surmising that Jesus is not the man for the job, he is not perhaps quite such a daft suggestion as it may seem prima facie.
He has his badges, qualifying him as a coach, so, theoretically at least, he is equally as qualified as any other men on the list (more so than Gareth Southgate upon his appointment with Middlesborough, although he was the single worst manager in football history, so perhaps not the best example).
Further, he has vast experience in the world of modern professional football, which is undoubtedly evolving so fast as to render any experience greater than, say, two years old, almost wholly irrelevant.
He is clearly of sufficient mental capacity to succeed as a manager.
He knows the club, he commands respect from the board and his fellow professionals.
He is popular with the fans, an element not to be underestimated (I'd wager there will be more chants of "Chris Hargreaves Yellow Army" in a single match than there was of the corresponding song during the stewardship of PB).

While I do not doubt that many if not all of the other candidates would have these attributes too, espressio unius est non exclusio alterius.

Matt.

Bearne1 wrote:Hargreaves all the way for me, seems to have so much passion for TUFC and it is so good to see. Obviously not got any managerial expertise but I think we should give him a shot. He gets my vote.

'Sadly I cannot be there but I will be wearing a T.U.F.C shirt, the flag will be flying at the shop, and my fingers will be crossed that the cup is lifted.'

MuzDog wrote:Agree with the three posts above.

The weather has had a big part to play on last season's downturn in attendances. We have averaged over 2,900 on Saturdays in both of the last two seasons - the big difference is we only get around 1,800 through the turnstiles on Tuesday evenings and there were six midweek games this season as opposed to three the year before.

Improving Tuesday attendances (any suggestions?), a bit of luck with the weather plus the three big "derbies" and the inevitable bounce from having the new grandstand should help us get the right side of 3,000 next season - provided we have a modicum of success on the pitch!

KlinK wrote:Just come off the phone with a friend of mine who is a long term Falkirk season ticket holder and, I think, a shareholder. He was less than complimentary about Hughes and commented that his record does not tell the full story. He thought Hughes inherited a good (and big) squad when getting Falkirk promoted but in trying to raise their level brought in ageing cronies on long contracts that eventually left them in a poor financial position from which they have not yet recovered.

He thought Hughes's main attribute was that he was a very hard worker but he was stubborn; bullied the players; only had a plan A; and when things were going well was constantly touting himself around for bigger jobs. My friend does have some knowledge of TUFC and thought that Hughes would be disastrous for us in our current state but he did think he wouldn't get the job as he wouldn't be able to string a coherent sentence together in an interview. He also felt, for some reason, that Hughes had burnt his bridges in Scotland and was unlikely to find another reasonable job there.

There are always two sides to every story and I have been on the Falkirk fans website (onefinfalkirk) and, as usual, there are many varying opinions of his managerial capabilities.

As for Lee Bullen my friend said he was brought into Falkirk by Hughes and has stayed on as coach but would be a complete unkown as a manager.
Mind you being a complete unkown as a manager would also apply to several other of our candidates and our previous manager.

Of interest my friend was telling me that Falkirk's crowds in the SPL averaged around 11,000 and are averaging around 4 - 5,000 in Division 1. So even now their crowds are double ours. Another point of interest is that Jack Compton, who was born in Torquay and had a trial with us a couple of years ago, made 23 appearances for them last year.

Although Scottish this friend has spent a great deal of time in the southwest London area and knows many Brentford supporters who think Forster would be a good choice.