£300,000 Off The Wage Bill

[ROADRUNNER]

pearce, downes, benyon, tonge, harding will all go as the wages they are on around £700-£800 per player, and lets face it 3 of them would struggle in the ryman league, ch needs to get his own players in on realistic wages with the budget he has to work with. also i see rice, cruise, and yeoman all let go.

[lucy6lucy]

pearce, downes, benyon, tonge, harding will all go as the wages they are on around £700-£800 per player, and lets face it 3 of them would struggle in the ryman league, ch needs to get his own players in on realistic wages with the budget he has to work with. also i see rice, cruise, and yeoman all let go.

Yeoman is a tough one. He always seems to score as a sub. I would give a 1 year contract

[RussianGull]

Yeoman is a tough one. He always seems to score as a sub. I would give a 1 year contract

I'd keep Yeoman, I like him he's a good player but I don't think we play to suit his talents, I don't get to see many games being up in Lincs, but I saw him start against Kiddy and he didn't do anything, not because he's rubbish, but because he had no support whatsoever despite fielding an attacking team with Thompson starting and Cameron too. It is a tough one to call but I do like him (and he's from Devon which is always nice!)

[Neal]

Given hindsight is a wonderful thing, perhaps you should have posted on here before the season started (and emailed the club) that Hawley wasnt going to be able to score a goal every 3 and a bit appearances as he did in a struggling L1 one club the season before. Or that Harding was going to miss most of the season through injury. Or that Tonge and Pearce wouldnt adjust to L2 football. Or that Bodin was going to look out of his depth. Or that Chappell couldnt carry on the form and potential he showed the season before?

I DID I didn't mention Pearce and Downes that's true. And I didn't email the club. I have also said due to having on contract a number of players not up to it we would finish 8th, repeated many times. So I never expected to get promotion because of Knills legacy. At the moment Im looking spot on, BUT..... I REALLY HOPE IM PROVED TOTALLY WRONG and we sneak into the play offs.

I am trying to support CH and the board as much as I can, which isn't much. Some on here just want to start the finger pointing, and start running the club down. I will give it to next season when CH has HIS OWN FULL team before I consider that.

[Sunnysideup]

Really? Perhaps you could quote your post from, say around July or August 2013, where you said you knew the likes of Hawley, Tonge, Harding et al would be crap.
If you can do that, give up your day job, cos football clubs would pay a fortune for someone who knows in advance if a player is going to be crap for them.

[AustrianAndyGull]

To be fair, i did slightly hint at the fact that Billy Bodin was never going to produce the goods after only a handful of games......

[Neal]

Really? Perhaps you could quote your post from, say around July or August 2013, where you said you knew the likes of Hawley, Tonge, Harding et al would be crap.
If you can do that, give up your day job, cos football clubs would pay a fortune for someone who knows in advance if a player is going to be crap for them.

27th April 2014

Rice, Tonge, Hutchings, Lathrope, Mansell, Harding, Cameron, Benyon, Hawley, Yeoman and Sullivan

Terrible conference south list that is. Expect bottom half finish if we end up with that lot. Only rice, lathrope and yeoman worth keeping. Just think of the wages that lot will cost as well, diabolical.

Yes.... F ing really, is that f ing good enough for you! Describing them as conf south means they will be crap. Or is that language too hard for you.

I don't lie about what I post!!

[madgull]

27th April 2014

Rice, Tonge, Hutchings, Lathrope, Mansell, Harding, Cameron, Benyon, Hawley, Yeoman and Sullivan

Terrible conference south list that is. Expect bottom half finish if we end up with that lot. Only rice, lathrope and yeoman worth keeping. Just think of the wages that lot will cost as well, diabolical.

Yes.... F ing really, is that f ing good enough for you! Describing them as conf south means they will be crap. Or is that language too hard for you.

I don't lie about what I post!!

He said 2013, not 2014. Perhaps you should have read his post properly before getting so aggressive.

[Neal]

The question is f ing stupid!!!!

This thread is about this season, and after seeing the said players many times in the previous season, FOR this season we had no chance with these players on board.

[madgull]

The question is f ing stupid!!!!

This thread is about this season, and after seeing the said players many times in the previous season, FOR this season we had no chance with these players on board.

Let me sum this chain of events up:

You said Knill signed players who were crap.
He said maybe you should have posted as such before he signed them and emailed the club if your powers of foresight are so good.
You said you did.
He said prove it.
You posted to show that you said all this in hindsight, not in foresight, in some kind of internet rage.
You get this pointed out to you.
You say that the question was stupid in the first place.

All of this, and it's the question that is stupid?

[Dave]

I had a look for Neal's foresight, in fact I trawled back through he site, looking to see if anyone had any foresight regards Knill's signings, apart from a few dissenting voices other Alan Knill's appointment, the absolute majority seem to welcome and applaud the signings made by AK.

Here's a few threads from back at that time;
Hawley and Ball confirmed.
http://forum.torquayfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6081
Dale Tonge.
http://forum.torquayfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5963
Jordan Chapell
http://forum.torquayfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5990
Alan Knill confirmed.
http://forum.torquayfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5805
Alan Knill's signings.
http://forum.torquayfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6070

On the face of it now, these signings do look expensive, that's purely because for whatever reasons some of these players didn't work out for AK or the club and we went down. In reality all Alan Knill did was bring in players he thought would progress the club and apart from two who seemed to be on top end league 2 wages, all the rest were on nothing more than the average going rate for league 2., and in Pearce and Chapell brought in young players to develop and sell on to make the club money.

£300,000 may seem a shocking amount, our wage bill as a league 2 club was probably at best average on a par with many others, however, as quite a few said, myself included, the parachute payment covered those wages for this season, of course it would done the club a huge favour if CH could have moved them in the summer, so CH has faced some difficulties no doubt. The club will be on a non-league income from the summer, CH would not be moving all these players on if he had the budget to keep some of them.

Any conference manager worth his salt would have Harding, a player with football league experience and a player who was an integral part of Aldershot's conference winning side, they would have Downes, Pearce and Chapell as well. Saying Knill's signings are Conference South crap is letting personal feelings cloud personal judgement, after all some of Knill's signings have played against two Conference South team in the Trophy, TUFC winning both games with an aggregate score line of 9.0 , I would suggest our players are by a country mile better than Conference South level.

[yellowforever]

On paper they looked good signings.

Hawley - A good goalscorer at league 2 level. Season before had got 15 in the league above.

Tonge - A regular in League 1/2 teams, well known as a solid full back, happy to relocate family down here.

Chappell - Impressed many on loan (including me) and was clearly a player Knill particularly favoured.

Ball - Was seen as a good young player by Derby, and had already been utilised as an impact sub at Championship level.

The players had a good enough pedigree, the question is why they didn't, and haven't shown it for Torquay.

Pearce - Pedigree at a much higher standard - was part of the England u19s team in 2008 for the UEFA Championship.

[Dave]

On paper they looked good signings.

Hawley - A good goalscorer at league 2 level. Season before had got 15 in the league above.

Tonge - A regular in League 1/2 teams, well known as a solid full back, happy to relocate family down here.

Chappell - Impressed many on loan (including me) and was clearly a player Knill particularly favoured.

Ball - Was seen as a good young player by Derby, and had already been utilised as an impact sub at Championship level.

The players had a good enough pedigree, the question is why they didn't, and haven't shown it for Torquay.

Pearce - Pedigree at a much higher standard - was part of the England u19s team in 2008 for the UEFA Championship.

Indeed that is the mystery. Looking at it these players added to what was already at the club should have been enough to see us in the upper mid table section of League 2 rather than relegation.

Alan Knill's management style ? Maybe not as some had played for AK before, did they just not settle here ? wouldn't be the first time, not welcomed by the inner circle ? Who knows.

[AustrianAndyGull]

When i went to the Kassam last in January last season in what was CH's first away game in charge of the Gulls, Torquay were 2nd bottom and 2 points off Bury. With 20 games of the season still left to play i may add.

What i witnessed that day was a Gulls performance more alarming than most under Knill. Anything but the 'new manager' effect.

A while later i witnessed a 'must win' game up at Hartlepool in which we were all singing how much more interesting watching the concrete fence in front of us with our back to the action was than the game itself. Somehow a worse showing than at Oxford. Then i went to York for the night game a while later when we manfully defended a 1-0 deficit for the best part of the game.

Actually it was at Hartlepool when i knew (IMO) that CH was well out of his depth. I had an inkling before that like some others did (Supernickywroe) and others that he would struggle but the Hartlepool game confirmed it to me.

So in actual fact there was nearly half a full season for CH to get Torquay out of the mess. It wasn't so much that he failed but more HOW he failed. Never did i see a game where his decision making and substitutions lent itself to the team 'having a real go'.

So Knill and his rubbish were a lot to blame as were his ridiculous merry go round with Nico, Cruise, Downes, Pearce etc and woeful management which included sending one of our better players in Lathrope on loan to Hereford. The remnants of Ling such as Bodin and Craig were not good enough yet still persisted with (not so much Craig) and seasoned pro's like Mansell and Nico etc had looked like it was one season to many but were still heavily used.

I just think that before CH arrived that all round the club it was just such a total mess that Chris always had a massive task on his hands. The manner in which he went about it though means IMO that so long as he is at the helm then you cannot progress.

Overall i think he is doing probably as well as could be expected with what he has and considering the turmoil of last season in terms of league position, in terms of performances i couldn't say obviously.

The club just seems to have spiralled out of control since Ling went off sick, the wrong managers picked, the wrong players signed, wrong attitude, wrong training methods, the wrong decisions by the board, the wrong this and the wrong that. I think it just gets to a point where if you try to analyse all the little things that went wrong and contributed to Torquay being in the conference then you'd be there all day.
There is no one thing to pinpoint, just a long series of things that are wrong, were wrong and went wrong. It just happened.

Good luck in the FA Trophy anyway, looking at the sides left it's there for the taking. Is the final still at Wembley?

[AustrianAndyGull]

I also think it is important to note that when Knill took over he had been left some shite by Ling such as Cruise, Bodin, Benyon and Craig, he then signed his own shite like Mozika, Hawley, Harding, Tonge, Chappell (turned out to be shite in the end which very much surprised me actually - looked a really useful player in his early TUFC days) and then along came CH and added even more shite onto this in the form of Stockley, Showunmi, O'Brien, Wilkinson (all completely useless loan players - Shaq was the one exception) he then brought back Danny Stevens which instantly meant relegation.

Basically no team could ever survive having given opportunities to all of the above.