Torquay United Fans Forum

My first time in Bristow's Bench today, and a magnificent place to watch an entertaining game of competitive football. Torquay were competitive for the fist seven minutes only. A fifty fifty challenge in which Carmichel overstretched for a ball and their player caught him late. From the bench it did not look like a sending off, but off went their man. After that the game moved at more of a pedestrian pace. Cheltenham scored from a well worked free kick and on possession and tempo deserved the lead. The feeling was though that Torquay sooner or later would sort it out with the numerical advantage. The opposite happened. Cheltenham tempo increased and they could have easily had five goals today. They were organised and compact without being outstanding.

The positioning of our players was awful. For long passages of play with numerical advantage Torquay were playing the spectacular pass from McDonald through to Fisher, by-passing the whole midfield. They never utilised the width pinging it from right to left as should be with numerical advantage. They never pushed up in midfield playing tappy football using the numbers.

The tempo Torquay played with was very much 'pre-season,' few players appeared to be playing as part of a team and there were too many passengers. The exceptions were Richards, McDonald, Butler and Smith who was taken off at half time for tactical reasons I presume. Richards was getting stuck in everywhere on the park, clearly frustrated at the hospital passes of his team mates. Butler had some good crosses and his positioning (and effort) in attack and defense was so much better than his other half in Hurst, McDonald tried to do the job of more than one player being pulled out of position frequently.

Exodus to me did not look 'with-it.' Captain material today, he was not. Looking down, little communication and as a footballer offered nothing. He should have been subbed in the second half as apart from his throw, which he took two from memory, offered little in terms of uplifting spirit or football. He made no effort to make it disgusting that's for sure and time and time again was out of position asking the impossible of his team mates.

All in all a dismal team performance and I only hope that we play with 11 men more often. I hope bollockings happen and wholesale changes are made for the next game. I would replace Speiss with Lavercombe. Speis was at fault for their second goal and the penalty. Give a chance to Odofin either starting or from the bench. He is ours, lets give him a chance. Is Malachi still with us....? If so lets give him a try please the little we have seen of him, his passing is good, he appears to have positional play, he can head the ball and passing and positional sense alone he should be in the team. Positioning of players today was fundamentally awful.

Special mention today to Aaron Downes. Fully deserved his goal and teams win. Lead by example, that's one area we did not have today.

The real losers today were the fans. People won't pay good money to watch that slop. Bad day at the office indeed. Awful day,

Listening to the match yesterday, it appeared to have many commonalities with the previous two games. In the Maccesfield game, (which I attended) we were under a lot of pressure in the first half, managed to sneak a goal and never really dominated to either secure the lead or apply increased pressure to add to it. However we did play well enough to win 1 - 0 against a team who had success last season and a greater degree of familiarity, which is a sign of positive things to come.

From listening to the Wrexham game, the pattern of play was the same. We soaked up pressure, scored the goal against the run of play but didn't have the attacking or defensive answers when Wrexham came at us at increasing tempo in the second half.

Against Halifax. The wing-back formation which with the return of Hurst, Cox was able to play gave us a much better attacking balance. However when we are in the ascendancy I think we need to build on our lead not sit back, reducing the tempo. It was clear from the commentary that Halifax could not handle the big man, Exodus throws and Halifax panicked in the build-up to them and in dealing with them. His throws are a physiological and physical weapon. I think we made a tactical error in taking him off the throws (or him choosing not to take them) when we are ahead in second halves of games. Add to the lead and maintain and increase the attacking tempo. Scare the opposition so they cannot play. At 2-2, we very nearly went behind 3-2 after a non-Exodus throw-in choice only for what the como described as a super save from Speiss. For the good of the team results I think Exodus should make the attacking throw-ins through out the match unless we have a decent lead in which that is not so necessary.

Also if we have a good lead I wonder if Cox would consider shuffling so Exodus has a holding midfield role (closer to the throw-ins and big presence in the centre of the field) allowing some game time and match experience for Oniel Odofin (who looked good at the mighty Dartmouth.)(He was not even on the bench yesterday.) It could be worth a try and better to experiment when in the ascendancy than necessity.

It is clear that we have the makings of a good side, on limited resources. The more game time our young squad has, the more they will become familiar and Cox can experiment with what they can offer. Come on you Yellows !!