Torquay v Woking 14/01/17

[arcadia]

Thought selection was poor Rooney and Chaney should have started.

[Dave]

Agree with you on Rooney, but sorry to say this, change the record on Chaney, today he was worse that useless when he came on, but still he was not the only one to be fair.

[Louis]

Moore stay in goal, don't ever do that again you were lucky this time.

I'm fed up with watching hoofball at Plainmoor. Seriously this long ball to nobody has to end. Our passing is awful, training needs to go back to basics of how to pass the ball.

Another depressing show, gates are dropping unsurprisingly.

[CP Gull]

I really, really wanted Nicho to make this work, but sadly he just isn't up to it ... time to move on and head in a different direction. Let's face it the last lot were totally inept and clueless from the off ... their one and only "success" in their opinion was the appointment of Nicho .... sadly , like their entire reign in charge, this was just another mistake.

[arcadia]

Agree with you on Rooney, but sorry to say this, change the record on Chaney, today he was worse that useless when he came on, but still he was not the only one to be fair.

I'm not saying that Chaney played well what I am saying is he should have started and we would have been more solid and kept possession. The same thing happened last week when he came off. As for the second goal the marking was bad and the keeper or coach did not organize the players very well.Starting a game is different to coming on.
Rooneys club sent a friend of mine a scout to watch him last week and today and he went away disappointed as he traveled a long way for nothing.

[goodluckgull]

Surprise, surprise Brett Williams plays with passion and desire .....he was playing for his own showcase....Think back to those games at the beginning of the season and how disappointed we were with his lack of interest. He is probably the most talented player we have but he hasn't shown that on the pitch when he had his chances. Yesterday (IMO) he was playing for a move away from Torquay.
Also wish people would stop referring to Nicho's desire for the players to be very fit as "tyre flipping". That was just a bit of pre season fun and doesn't happen now. I believe the fact that the players are so fit has helped with the quick recovery from injury. Take a look a Youngy back at full training.

[6667GULL]

Brett Williams 3 goals in 22 appearances (12 as sub)
Not given a chance? rubbish.
As I've said before get rid and free the money for someone new.

[Southampton Gull]

Surprise, surprise Brett Williams plays with passion and desire .....he was playing for his own showcase....Think back to those games at the beginning of the season and how disappointed we were with his lack of interest. He is probably the most talented player we have but he hasn't shown that on the pitch when he had his chances. Yesterday (IMO) he was playing for a move away from Torquay.
Also wish people would stop referring to Nicho's desire for the players to be very fit as "tyre flipping". That was just a bit of pre season fun and doesn't happen now. I believe the fact that the players are so fit has helped with the quick recovery from injury. Take a look a Youngy back at full training.

One of the criticisms of him from within the game is his constant desire to use the training methods "most" only employ during pre-season. Unfortunately their concerns are regularly being proved just as witnessed by the dire performances of players late into the game. Feel free to draw your own conclusions but this is definitely one area where Nicholson deserves the blame.

[gullpower]

I know there is a petition against GI...

The petition is not against GI. It is about making sure that the Council as landlords of Plainmoor do not sell the club down the river.

The petition is, as the title says, about saving Plainmoor to ensure that TUFC continue to play there. As David Thomas has written/said, GI have made no secret of the fact that they want to build a new stadium. Fair enough. But their record shows that they are prone to taking over clubs and promising new stadiums which never materialise. I have said before that if GI want to build an all singing, dancing fandango stadium with bells and whistles on for TUFC to walk into as they walk out of Plainmoor I will be the first to learn how to do cartwheels. The petition is about trying to make sure that the Club do not end up groundless.

http://www.torbay.gov.uk/DemocraticServ ... =503168599

As for GI, yesterday's performance shows how badly their investment is needed. I think forevertufc's post timed 20.11 is spot on.

And why oh why did he take Harrard (wily seasoned hard man) off and leave Reid (usually ok but yesterday totally useless) on? It would have been interesting to see what Harrard and Williams could do playing together. We need more hard men! Time and time again in midfield we were simply knocked off the ball - that's when we weren't giving it away. Apart from the penalty did any Torquay player get a yellow card?

[CP Gull]

Brett Williams 3 goals in 22 appearances (12 as sub)
Not given a chance? rubbish.
As I've said before get rid and free the money for someone new.

So, that"s actually 3 goals in 9 starts then - not too shabby at all. As for the 12 as sub, you can disregard most of them ( apart from yesterday obviously) as most of those were just a few minutes here and there. I'm not saying Brett Williams is necessarily the answer but whilst you're at it try looking up the stats for Jamie Reed, Shaun Harrad and Sam Chaney and Nathan Blissett before them, and see how they stack up in the scoring stakes!

I think most fans, regardless of what they think of Williams, would actually agree that he hasn't been given much of a chance by the Manager. By that I mean a regular starting position.

Clearly in terms of what he has contributed, Williams represents Nico's worst signing. He is a tremendous waste of money quite simply because the Manager never uses him, or at least not nearly enough. It's all very well saying "get rid of him" but when he is barely getting a kick down here he isn't able to showcase his talent is he, and when the only offer on the table is a loan move to Weston-Super-Mare as far as I am aware, can you blame him for turning that down at this stage of his career.

Whether you blame Nico for signing him in the first place - surely if he had done his research properly he would know that he isn't the sort of striker who would"run his socks off" - or you blame him for the lack of opportunities he has given him this season - matters not, either way Nico has wasted a fair old chunk of our budget on this player. The idea also that you could suddenly persuade a 29 year old to change his ways and his approach to the game was pure folly in my opinion.

He (Williams) has been likened in the past to Dimitar Berbatov, by the Manager, praise indeed .... but does anyone think that Berbatov in his prime would actually get a game under the present management? Ahead of the likes of Blissett, Reed and Harrad? Personally, I'm not so sure!

[PL21gull]

I agree with Taxilady and Louis - forget the personal recriminations, we should go back to basics. We are a fulltime professional club and I am so fed up with seeing smaller clubs and teams positioned beneath us playing us off our own park with good basic tactics, pass and move, support, hunting down the ball in twos and threes, building play and getting forward in numbers.
It really isn't rocket science, but we seem to set ourselves up to be strung out all over the pitch; indeed, our midfield twosome hardly ever pass the ball between one another, our strikers rarely play together (let alone come off their defender to receive ball to feet or chest in order to bring others into the play - instead they have to jump for long hopeful balls going over their heads or into the corners). And yet other modest outfits can play together as a team. And they even make our keeper come into play by shooting at the goal instead of trying to blast the ball out the ground.
Let's face it, our main tactic has been to go long and hopefully score from a corner; and yet when we play the ball occasionally on the deck we can make good scoring opportunities (which is what Forest Green allowed us to do).
Nico must really concentrate on teamwork, basic passing and purposeful movement, composure in the penalty area. We need 7 wins from our remaining games, so lets be professional and play together to achieve the points needed to safeguard our status.

[brucie]

Williams scored yesterday when we had already lost. Big deal. People are moaning about some of our players are lazy - well Williams is just the same. As for criticising Nicholson for his team selection - well Channey.Williams, Rooney, Reid etc etc - it doesn't matter who we play the players are fecking rubbish that's the problem.

The ridiculous message about the Brett Wiliams fan club is just that ridiculous - if he had played from the start we would have still lost, no difference at all.

People moan about Blissett, but he was the only striker we had that defenders wouldn't want to play against. Do you think any defender in this league would be quaking about playing against Williams, Reid, Chaney or Harrad - no they would be too busy pissing themselves laughing.

As for Moore - does anyone seriously believe that he was all but signed until a championship club came in for him? Sounds like more tosh to me.

New owners, and we are worse than ever. Crowds are dropping, people are becoming more and more apathetic, Nicholsons floundering as he has a whole raft of Southern League players at his disposal.

Unless some action is taken we are going down for certain. Over to you MR OSBORNE?

[CP Gull]

Williams scored yesterday when we had already lost. Big deal. People are moaning about some of our players are lazy - well Williams is just the same. As for criticising Nicholson for his team selection - well Channey.Williams, Rooney, Reid etc etc - it doesn't matter who we play the players are fecking rubbish that's the problem.

The ridiculous message about the Brett Wiliams fan club is just that ridiculous - if he had played from the start we would have still lost, no difference at all.

People moan about Blissett, but he was the only striker we had that defenders wouldn't want to play against. Do you think any defender in this league would be quaking about playing against Williams, Reid, Chaney or Harrad - no they would be too busy pissing themselves laughing.

As for Moore - does anyone seriously believe that he was all but signed until a championship club came in for him? Sounds like more tosh to me.

New owners, and we are worse than ever. Crowds are dropping, people are becoming more and more apathetic, Nicholsons floundering as he has a whole raft of Southern League players at his disposal.

Unless some action is taken we are going down for certain. Over to you MR OSBORNE?

Oh dear, lost our sense of humour have we, Brucie?

Even by your standards there is an awful lot of moaning going on in the above post! It appears that your solution to all of this is for the new owners (who by the way haven't even been formally approved by the National League yet!) to just throw a shed load of money at it and change the WHOLE team presumably. How likely do you think that is? It appears that you don't rate any of the players, fair enough, I would agree that in the summer there should be wholesale changes made and would probably only want to keep four or five of the current squad - but that ain't going to happen in January.

As for Williams, well he got twenty minutes and he scored - and although we wouldn't have deserved it we almost got an equaliser at the death with an effort blocked by Pokey on the line. So, the game wasn't lost when he came on and never is until the final whistle blows which is why, if you had bothered to attend, you would have seen FGR come back from 3-0 down on Boxing Day and nearly rescue a point or even grab a win and why with 7 minutes to go on NYD they managed to score twice to bring themselves back to 5-5 and very nearly win it in added time. Of course the game isn't lost at 2-0 down with 20 odd minutes to go!

Would we have won if Williams had started? Honestly, I don't know, but then neither do you and at least I saw what he brought to the team in the twenty or so minutes he did play - which I am assuming you didn't, but I guess you formed your opinion on that from listening to Radio Devon? Or, don't you even bother to do that these days?

As for Kieffer Moore, yes I do believe we were on the verge of getting him BUT quite simply we were gazzumped by a Championship club, once they were in for him we had no chance of competing.

As for Blissett, get over it, he's gone and we desperately need to replace him. Personally I happen to think that of all the strikers currently available to the Manager, Brett Williams is the only one who is close to being a regular goal scorer for us - but is he the answer, probably not. We need better players in ALL areas of the team, but let's be realistic here, we cannot change the WHOLE team. The fact is that, with admittedly poor resources, the Manager has built a poor team which desperately needs better players but they cost money and given that our location is often a problem and the fact that we are languishing near the bottom of the Natuonal League - bringing them in is easier said than done.

[GullibleGav]

After nearly 40 years of loyal support for my local team, last season was the final straw for me.I just couldn't afford to attend any more. This week. my daughter decided to treat me to an afternoon at plainmoor as she thoughtfully felt it would do me good. Well I am sorry to say I've told her to keep her money in her purse from now on. I have never been so embarrassed by a display by a Torquay United team like I witnessed yesterday, totally bereft of basic skill, effort,understanding of each others whereabouts on the pitch, absolutely bloody awful.The sooner somebody realises this club needs major financial surgery the better.

[hector]

So, that"s actually 3 goals in 9 starts then - not too shabby at all. As for the 12 as sub, you can disregard most of them ( apart from yesterday obviously) as most of those were just a few minutes here and there. I'm not saying Brett Williams is necessarily the answer but whilst you're at it try looking up the stats for Jamie Reed, Shaun Harrad and Sam Chaney and Nathan Blissett before them, and see how they stack up in the scoring stakes!

I think most fans, regardless of what they think of Williams, would actually agree that he hasn't been given much of a chance by the Manager. By that I mean a regular starting position.

Clearly in terms of what he has contributed, Williams represents Nico's worst signing. He is a tremendous waste of money quite simply because the Manager never uses him, or at least not nearly enough. It's all very well saying "get rid of him" but when he is barely getting a kick down here he isn't able to showcase his talent is he, and when the only offer on the table is a loan move to Weston-Super-Mare as far as I am aware, can you blame him for turning that down at this stage of his career.

Whether you blame Nico for signing him in the first place - surely if he had done his research properly he would know that he isn't the sort of striker who would"run his socks off" - or you blame him for the lack of opportunities he has given him this season - matters not, either way Nico has wasted a fair old chunk of our budget on this player. The idea also that you could suddenly persuade a 29 year old to change his ways and his approach to the game was pure folly in my opinion.

He (Williams) has been likened in the past to Dimitar Berbatov, by the Manager, praise indeed .... but does anyone think that Berbatov in his prime would actually get a game under the present management? Ahead of the likes of Blissett, Reed and Harrad? Personally, I'm not so sure!

You're falling into the David Thomas habit of counting goals against games started. If Williams, like yesterday, scored as a sub, how can that goal contribute towards a 'games started' stat?

I'm not against Williams by any means - I think he is the one player that offers evidence of KN's poor management - but the use of goals scored as a sub against games started, to fuel an idea of profiling forwards is something that Thomas always does for the likes of Benyon to make them look better than they are and it has always irked me.

Everything else you say about Williams, I agree with, however.