Chesterfield v Torquay United match thread

[taxilady]

@ Bengull

to the despairers & bottlers on this forum...the time to get your hankies out is when we have no mathematical chance of remaining in the league. That day has not yet arrived. Stop whinging & get to Plainmoor ! Loved Shamir's goal today , very well taken. Liked the look of Wilkinson too. Looking forward to the Accrington game !

[gullno4]

not sure it's been mentioned, but their midfielder banks has put a picture on twitter of a chunk of skin missing on his ribs. apparently labadie bit him! lovely!

[bengull]

Also just to add, Andy is alive and well and was in good humour today. His internet has been cut off at the moment though so his unique brand of posting is more sporadic.

Nice to bump into Bix, I hope you had a cracking day mate.

Big thanks to the Charlton, Wednesday, Blades fans who all swelled the away figures, joined in with the songs and I think had a good afternoon out to soothe the pain of their matches being off. They celebrated our goal more than we did!

[taxilady]

not sure it's been mentioned, but their midfielder banks has put a picture on twitter of a chunk of skin missing on his ribs. apparently labadie bit him! lovely!

seems unlikely that Joss would risk a booking & subsequent two match suspension just for a quick snack ? Seriously, I'd want to hear our player's side of the story before jumping to conclusions in support of the opposition.

[gullno4]

I only said what banks tweeted. calm down

[Dutchgull]

Bengull
Brilliant post. A dose of realism. This division is so close this year anything could happen. We may even stay up !!

[Rjc70]

Top f**king posting, that man.

Matt.

I tend to agree with it along with the better players listed. My only thought regarding switching Goodwin is that he seems to be having a bloody good game every match in the position he has been playing. Promising to hear Wilkinson impressed those there.

On a separate note, had Lathrope been substituted by the time their centre half ran through the middle of the park to lay off for their second?

[CapeTownGull]

Table looks bad but I believe we can stay up and depends a lot on the manager. I liked the team today especially the defence and hs must stick with that to get some consistency going. Likewise no more loanees please as we certainly have enough players now.If we go down it will be bad decisions by the managers as opposed to the players in underplaying Cruise, Yeoman, Pearce and prefering Nicholson, and various loanees. But we can definitely stay up and we need a lot of positive support at home even if we are losing. Glad Goodwin has some goals in him and if Wilkinson also does and Chappell gets a run we have some goals in the team. Would be nice if Labadie gets some goals too as we know he can.

[hector]

There seems to me to be a bit of an over-reaction in the immediate aftermath of today's result. The damage today is purely psychological, not physical. No-one expected us to get anything from this fixture, so why all the fuss after the defeat?

I walked out of the ground and I was absolutely gutted/devastated by what I had just seen, but today we HAVE to take the positives, we simply can not afford to focus on the negatives, otherwise we may as well admit defeat and give up here and now.

After gifting Chesterfield an early chance to rattle our bar, the next 50 minutes could be described as some of the most even, honest league two football I have seen all season. A lot of the fans from various other teams who had joined us for the day struggled to see how we could be so lowly, and Chesterfield so high, based on today's match up.

Goodwin's goal was excellent, he knew exactly what he was going to do from the moment he set off, and he executed it superbly, it was a superb finish. Instead of sitting back, we went hunting for a second and were playing confidently, you simply can not legislate for what happened next. Michael Poke has probably kicked the ball more times than I've had hot dinners, the fact he chose today to forget how to do it properly is unfortunate timing to say the least. But you absolutely can not blame or accuse the rest of the team's performance dropping because of it, it did not.

When you get a bit of good fortune handed to you (one they did not necessarily deserve) it galvanises you, willed on by a stirred home crowd Chesterfield did crank up the pressure. Even when they took the lead our heads did not drop. We created two or three excellent opportunities. Goodwin's shot from distance cannons off the inside of the post, it is just bad luck. I thought Wilkinson looked very capable when he came on, I am not blaming him for his miss one bit, it was a much harder chance than what it has been made out to be. I would certainly start him in the next game.

Their third goal is simply irrelevant because we had pushed so far up looking for an equaliser. Today isn't a signifier that we are going down, it is the exact opposite. Take the score line out of the equation and we have matched the league leaders and given them a really good game. Had our goalkeeper not made a massive blunder I do not think we would have lost 3-1, I don't think we would have lost. We may even have hung on a'la Pompey. We may have caught them on the counter-attack. Poke's blunder was a one-off, he well never do that again. It completely changed the course of the game.

Wallowing in the fact that we lost the match is not going to help, especially when everyone expected us to lose anyway. It doesn't make any sense. Take heart from the fact we played well and created a lot more opportunities in this match than we have in most throughout the season. Know that we have some very capable young players in our squad and know that threatening not to bother again this season is futile, and that lending your support to two massive home games next week is far more important. Two bad results in those two and then we might start panicking.

Honestly, I don't know how it sounded on the radio, but we did really well today and its a big step to convincing me that we'll be ok this season. We most certainly did not bottle it today.

Hopefully, you are right. We need to start winning at home and that is where us supporters can try and do our bit.

[Dave]

I know Bengull personally and a long with every other forum member I know count as a friend, I'm particularly having a go at his view point, but during the last season we were relegated to the conference (not saying this season will end in relegation) we as fans were saying the self same things we are now, I remember going away to Swindon during that season we went down, it's good comparison to yesterday, although later in season, Swindon were chasing and did go up automatically , we fell behind to an early goal, but went on to dominate large parts of the game, had shots saved, had shots fizz just wide of the post, and got a late equaliser from a Thorpe penalty, but then saw Swindon run the length of our half straight from the kick-off score and win, we even had Swindon and neutral fans that day ask us, how come you're so low in the league, but we were and went down.

After 30 games, certainly when the 46 are completed the league table doesn't lie, bad luck, bad refereeing decisions are NOT the reason your at the bottom, of course they don't help (every team fall victim at some stage of the season to that) but that's not the common denominator, bad decision making on and off the field by the club and it's coaching staff, a long with a team that's just not good enough are the reasons for it.

As a club a few short seasons ago, we picked up £500k in transfer fees for Bobby.O, Ellis and yes the cut price O'Kane, not with standing whether we should have got more for O'Kane, £500k was enough money for the club to secure it's league status for at least 10 years in my view, but a large chunk of that money was spent on the training ground, since then we've trained at Paignton college 3G, Homers Heath, Plainmoor it self and various other places. How many times have we actually used the training ground? Was that money well spent? Answers on a post card.

I will continue to give my club all the support I can, everyone at the club from the board through to the coaching staff, players and fans a like will do everything we can to keep the club in the league, that goes with out saying. But if we scrape through this time and stay in the league, my message to all at the club, is wake up and do what needs to be done to get us back up into the top half of the league, I'M tried of fighting for the club and there many like me who are also tired of fighting for the club, we shouldn't be back in this position.

[ferrarilover]

I like BenGull, he's just about my favourite poster on here (perhaps the delightful TaxiLady pips him to the post). Normally, I'd be right there in your camp, saying that we were let down by one simple mistake that couldn't possibly happen again. Thing is, I've lost the will to believe that (for now). He made two bad decisions against AC Cobblers and cost us the game. He made one mistake yesterday and cost us the game. We conceded one shot against Morecambe and dropped two points. We made one mistake for the penalty at home to Plymouth and dropped two points. We allowed Exeter three shots and lost 3-1. We made one mistake at Oxford and lost 1-0. We made one mistake against Rochdale away and lost 1-0.

This is L2, our defenders are going to concede chances. This year, the opposition has scored with (at a guess) something like 80% of their shots on our target. We must score with about 2% of ours and that's why we're up shit creek.

You reference Portsmouth, but that was a game that, ordinarily, we would have lost. It was only because their bloke blazed over the bar two really good chance late on that we aren't now bottom.

We can't do any better than give away one or two chances a game. Even Chelsea/Man Utd etc do that, but we MUST find a striker who can take those presented to him.

I said on another thread, in response to some mouthy Argyle tosser, that Plymouth would be bottom without Reid's goals (they would, I've checked). That is the difference between them and us. Their club, their squad, their staff, their fans, their training, diet, fitness, ethos etc is all no better than ours. What they've done is got lucky in the loan market and picked up a guy who is on for 20 this season. That's why they're 10th (or whatever) and we're starting to stare down the barrel of non-League football.

It's too late to add anyone else now, to do so would be a bit embarrassing, if I'm honest. It seems this Wilkinson kid couldn't hit a cows arse with a banjo, so he doesn't sound like being the answer. One last roll of the dice and stick Sully and Yeoman up front?

Matt.

[ferrarilover]

Oh noes!!!! Two posts opening up by being nice to Ben, then (sort of) probing his last post. This is going to look vindictive...

Matt.

[Dave]

Michael Poke was NOT at fault for either of those Northampton goals, he should NEVER, NOT EVER, in whole history of football, EVEN HAD TO FACE THOSE TWO SHOTS, anyone who fails to see that, lacks the basic of all footballing knowledge.

Sorry, forgot to add, when Pokey did sadly have to face those shots, he was beaten by two very good and well taken shots, as Pokey did on both occasions the right thing, something that I've seen keepers at all levels coached to do by professional goalkeeper coach's.

[hector]

Michael Poke was NOT at fault for either of those Northampton goals, he should NEVER, NOT EVER, in whole history of football, EVEN HAD TO FACE THOSE TWO SHOTS, anyone who fails to see that, lacks the basic of all footballing knowledge.

Sorry, forgot to add, when Pokey did sadly have to face those shots, he was beaten by two very good and well taken shots, as Pokey did on both occasions the right thing, something that I've seen keepers at all levels coached to do by professional goalkeeper coach's.

I would agree with that.

The fault for those goals lay with Nicholson/O'Connor. There is a possibility that he could have done better but essentially the fault lay with the defence, and Nicholson has obviously lost his place for his part in the goals.

[brucie]

Ben - you are actually wrong on this one. In our position we cannot take any positives form a three one defeat in a game we were winning with half an hour to go. It matters not whether it was Chesterfield who are top or Northampton who are bottom.
We have got no points this week from two games. That simply isn't good enough. We simply have to start picking up points on a regular basis. WInning one game and getting beat in the next three will mean relegation.
Listening to the radio I was suprised how little Chesterfield created and taking the lead we seem shoot ourselves in the foot.
In the Northampton game we were lambasted because of the way we played. I don't actually think it was that bad. Playing on a bog against a team intent on time wasting for 80 minutes of the match I actually think that that we were unlucky. I say that because we suffered form the arse end of a decision which on another 99 times out of a 100 would have gone in our favour.
However yesterdays match wasn't down to luck. When your keeper boots the ball against the back of your centre half then we are down and out.
That single moment lost us the game - Dave Thomas described it as the team having a "nervous breakdown" and that seems about right.
We are a team that is used to losing. We have a load of inexperienced players and its a massive ask for us to stay up.