Super Kev To You

[ShaymanHere]

Hi Guys halifax fan here, Kevin Nicholson is the favourite for the job with us. He kept you up from what was a season everyone thought you was going down and he did that in difficult times with the club.

Do you think he could be the man for halifax and would you have liked to see him back at Torquay??

[brucie]

Well kev is a legend - (in his own mind at least)

Basically he did well for us in difficult circumstances but at the start of this season signed a whole host of injured terrible players. Good luck to him though if he gets the job.

[Wolborough]

Loyal, enthusiastic - first managerial role here which had ups and downs. If KN gets the job he could do well if he learns from past experiences.

[Cruisinho]

It will be a very different experience for him there. In torquay he was at a club he knew from his time here, and loved the club.

Will be interesting to see how he does at a club he has no past connections with..... if he gets it.

Hopefully his heart will not rule his head less.

[merse btpir]

Hopefully he will take some of the 'sicknote' rubbish he signed for us to you and get you relegated instead of us..... and look out for tractor tyre marks on the pitch!

[Arrywithnobrain]

Hopefully he will take some of the 'sicknote' rubbish he signed for us to you and get you relegated instead of us..... and look out for tractor tyre marks on the pitch! :clap:

Would it not be supreme irony if Nicho kept Halifax up and Owers took Torquay down leaving tractor tyre marks on the Merse reputation for infallibility ? Or maybe Merse, Owers will get the Halifax job and that Torquay Messiah Cox will return to assist Torquay, Guiseley and Barrow to all get relegated in the same season[.../b]

[sgf]

Would it not be supreme irony if Nicho kept Halifax up and Owers took Torquay down leaving tractor tyre marks on the Merse reputation for infallibility ? Or maybe Merse, Owers will get the Halifax job and that Torquay Messiah Cox will return to assist Torquay, Guiseley and Barrow to all get relegated in the same season[.../b]

Do you actually realise how pathetic you come across??

Once again you make a thread personal

[Jerry]

Hi Guys halifax fan here, Kevin Nicholson is the favourite for the job with us. He kept you up from what was a season everyone thought you was going down and he did that in difficult times with the club.

Do you think he could be the man for halifax and would you have liked to see him back at Torquay??

He's a decent man who many believe has the potential to be decent coach. Our job came far too early for him though and I still think he needs to go and get some coaching experience before he takes another managers job.

Kept his dignity here whilst having all sorts of ridiculous issues to deal with both on and off the field.

Just beware if he talks about bringing his "fitness guru" Simon Jeffrey with him. This bloke is a complete charlatan who Nicholson seemed to be in thrall to. His input resulted in the most physically unfit for football squad I have ever seen. This is the source of the earlier tractor tyre comment as the players were supposedly "flipping" tractor tyres as a fitness measure throughout pre season training.

As you will see from the comments which will inevitably come on this thread, Nicho is a very divisive figure amongst some of our fans. Some think he is/was fantastic and others that he was utterly incompetent. It seems like every thread on this board eventually descends into arguing over his merits!

[Arrywithnobrain]

Do your actually realise how pathetic you come across??

Once again you make a thread personal

Sorry I did not realise that you were a mouthpiece for Merse - not that he needs another one. Nothing personal in my post - just a reflection on the cheap shots that the fount of football ignorance likes to spout and his acolytes lap up. Good luck to Nicholson if he gets the Halifax job - it will no doubt give Merse more dud ammunition to fire that is of no relevance to Torquay's current plight. Similarly I doubt that Cox would be any better than Owers or Nicholson but there have been posters on this site who have extolled his virtues (maybe you are one - I can't be bothered to do the relevant research).
If Merse and his lapdogs wish to avail themselves of every opportunity to criticise Nicholson and/or the players that he signed (which is a personal agenda) then I am happy to raise the issue. I will desist when the tiresome self-appointed purveyor of soccer wisdom realises that Nicholson is no more responsible for the current situation than any of the previous umpteen managers. Owers is the current manager and as such bears the responsibility for the club's current footballing performances. In footballing management terms the adage "The King is dead ... Long Live The King" is everything, so the criticsm of Nicholson is much like saying that historically, because of his defeat in the Battle of Hastings, Harold II was to blame for the subsequent death of William Rufus.

[tomogull]

Hopefully he will take some of the 'sicknote' rubbish he signed for us to you and get you relegated instead of us..... and look out for tractor tyre marks on the pitch!

Shayman - ignore this post. If you have wasted your life away and ploughed through the plethora of posts from this Forum member, you will know that, for whatever reason, he has an obsessive dislike of Kevin Nicholson.

Here are a few FACTS, so I'll let you draw your own conclusions. There are few Gulls fans who will disagree that for the past four seasons (at least) the running of the club has been catastrophic - first by well-meaning supporters and now by a predatory property developer who admits has no interest in football. Even Nicholson conceded his appointment was the 'cheap option'. Every thinking fan knows that the running of a club affects what happens on the pitch. Look at Sunderland, Chesterfield and Hartlepool as three examples. Last season, we were 'saved' from bankruptcy by the present owner - for whatever reason, we can only surmise.

That's the background to Nicholson's two and a bit seasons as manager. Before the start of last season, our central defender, Angus MacDonald, was transferred to Barnsley for £100,000. Nicholson was not given any of that money to find a replacement. The season before last, Nicholson brought in several useful loan and non-contract signings, including a 'keeper, Brendan Moore, who is now with Div 1 side, Rochdale. He also brought in a young midfielder, Josh Rees, from Nuneaton. He wanted to sign Rees last season, but wasn't able to match an offer from National South side, Chelmsford - that's an indication of the tight budget he had to work with. Rees is now with Bromley. He's a midfield player and is their top scorer. Also towards the end of last season, Nicho was promised funds to bring in re-inforcements, but at the last minute the rug was pulled so he couldn't bring in players to bolster the squad. Consequently, we finished the season with only 3 or 4 substitutes for several games.

My opinion was that in consideration of the current state of the club, as long as Nicholson improved the team's position each season, he was doing okay. In 2015/16, we finished 18th with 51 points - goals for 54, against 76. Last season, we finished 17th with 53 points - goals for 54 - goals against 61. Okay - some will argue that the improvement should have been greater. I would argue that the reduction in the goals against was a big step forward.

This season, we were told that Nicho had an improved budget. He brought in experienced players which most fans were happy with, but we suffered several pre-season injuries. Nevertheless, the players he re-signed and some of the players he brought in have been the mainstay of this season's side. After a poor start - one draw and three defeats - he was sacked after four games. Many fans thought he should have been given a chance to turn things around. Incidentally, our neighbours, Plymouth, suffered an early season injury crisis and were bottom of the league. Some impatient fans were calling for the manager to go, but Argyle are a much better run club and stuck with the manager, and they are now very close to a play-off place.

What Nicholson does well is get the best out of players so that the team as a whole is better than the individual players. In my view, where he failed this season was 1. he didn't bring in a decent striker (scoring goals has been a problem all season) and 2. he didn't bring in a right back when our first choice right back started the season on the injury list.

Whoever is appointed at The Shay, I hope that Halifax stay up ..... and that we do also, of course.

[Arrywithnobrain]

Shayman - ignore this post. If you have wasted your life away and ploughed through the plethora of posts from this Forum member, you will know that, for whatever reason, he has an obsessive dislike of Kevin Nicholson.

Here are a few FACTS, so I'll let you draw your own conclusions. There are few Gulls fans who will disagree that for the past four seasons (at least) the running of the club has been catastrophic - first by well-meaning supporters and now by a predatory property developer who admits has no interest in football. Even Nicholson conceded his appointment was the 'cheap option'. Every thinking fan knows that the running of a club affects what happens on the pitch. Look at Sunderland, Chesterfield and Hartlepool as three examples. Last season, we were 'saved' from bankruptcy by the present owner - for whatever reason, we can only surmise.

That's the background to Nicholson's two and a bit seasons as manager. Before the start of last season, our central defender, Angus MacDonald, was transferred to Barnsley for £100,000. Nicholson was not given any of that money to find a replacement. The season before last, Nicholson brought in several useful loan and non-contract signings, including a 'keeper, Brendan Moore, who is now with Div 1 side, Rochdale. He also brought in a young midfielder, Josh Rees, from Nuneaton. He wanted to sign Rees last season, but wasn't able to match an offer from National South side, Chelmsford - that's an indication of the tight budget he had to work with. Rees is now with Bromley. He's a midfield player and is their top scorer. Also towards the end of last season, Nicho was promised funds to bring in re-inforcements, but at the last minute the rug was pulled so he couldn't bring in players to bolster the squad. Consequently, we finished the season with only 3 or 4 substitutes for several games.

My opinion was that in consideration of the current state of the club, as long as Nicholson improved the team's position each season, he was doing okay. In 2015/16, we finished 18th with 51 points - goals for 54, against 76. Last season, we finished 17th with 53 points - goals for 54 - goals against 61. Okay - some will argue that the improvement should have been greater. I would argue that the reduction in the goals against was a big step forward.

This season, we were told that Nicho had an improved budget. He brought in experienced players which most fans were happy with, but we suffered several pre-season injuries. Nevertheless, the players he re-signed and some of the players he brought in have been the mainstay of this season's side. After a poor start - one draw and three defeats - he was sacked after four games. Many fans thought he should have been given a chance to turn things around. Incidentally, our neighbours, Plymouth, suffered an early season injury crisis and were bottom of the league. Some impatient fans were calling for the manager to go, but Argyle are a much better run club and stuck with the manager, and they are now very close to a play-off place.

What Nicholson does well is get the best out of players so that the team as a whole is better than the individual players. In my view, where he failed this season was 1. he didn't bring in a decent striker (scoring goals has been a problem all season) and 2. he didn't bring in a right back when our first choice right back started the season on the injury list.

Whoever is appointed at The Shay, I hope that Halifax stay up ..... and that we do also, of course.

Good balanced post. He did get a right back (Higgins) who has been absent for personal reasons - it was the left back (Davis) who was out for a while that was a useful addition when he returned. Some of the players that Nicholson nurtured, like Young and McGinty, have been consistent performers (despite unwarranted criticism from certain quarters) whereas many of the transient arrivals under Owers have contributed very little during their brief stays.

[Gulliball]

He has split opinion amongst Torquay supporters, so I’ll try to give a balanced view (albeit quite positive). He was a very popular player and retained that as a manager – which in itself was how a lot of it started, as the previous (paid) manager, Chris Hargreaves, was his teammate as a player and wasn’t overly successful in management – not saving us from relegation out of the Football League in 2013/14 and then 13th place in 2014/15, so this was seen as the club doing the same thing again with a popularist choice. He was also seen as the cheap appointment, which he almost certainly was, but that was the position the club was in.

It’s a simple fact that when you're at the bottom of the table and losing a lot of games, you are going to come in for stick – his successor here is finding that out now as well. It doesn’t matter what restraints or circumstances might be there, if you lose games for a long enough period, you’ll come in for criticism, so by the end of his two year spell this had built up - anyone in his position would face the same. A few comments he made also got ridiculed, which is the same issue, as when you’re losing games, anything can be turned into mockery. Again, his successor is finding that out now, that when you try to say positive things (we’re not rubbish anymore, will be out of relegation zone by Christmas etc) you leave yourself open to looking stupid when you lose most weeks.

You’re probably aware that there’s been several off-field issues at our club in recent years. Put simply, and particularly in Kevin Nicholson’s spell here, there was no money. The lottery winner had left, leaving behind a club over spending by £2k per day, and no-one wanted to buy the club, so in the end a local board of 4 people invested £30k each and bought the club. That money didn’t go very far and so everything was cut back to the barest possible bones. The headline grabbing stories were things like players driving themselves to games because we couldn’t afford a coach, or Nicholson himself driving the players to games in a minibus.

That is the background to his spell in charge here – and why despite losing so many games, he is still well liked by a lot of fans here. Once the immediate rage at 5pm on a Saturday subsides, most fans have the knowledge of the club to realise the constraints he worked in and factored this into judgement of his time in charge.

It was his first management job, at a club with no money and off-field battles, so thing’s weren’t perfect, and his win % floated around 30-35% for his spell in charge. With any teams that are losing games there will be things to criticise, but with the infrastructure of the club there simply wasn’t the money for dedicated staff or resources to run the club professionally.

I think the best way he can be judged is against those he directly succeeded and preceded, who were working under reasonably similar situations. He had a far better record on the pitch than his predecessor, and far more experienced, Paul Cox. He’s also got a far better record than the man who replaced him last September, despite the increase in budget that Owers has been afforded. Owers still has time to turn things around, but at present he’s not been able to match the results that Nicholson achieved, and at best from here he’s only going to match what we’ve done for the last few seasons.

It may be a case for us that you don’t quite appreciate what you have until it’s gone. In comparison to where we’ve been as a club in the last 50+ years, pulling off a ‘Great Escape’ from the National League may not be something people want to see as a success, but for the position of the club now, maybe with hindsight those weren’t so bad after all. We’re currently staring regional football in the face - something we haven’t seen since the first half of 1927.

It will be interesting to see how he does in a new role, and I wish him well if he does take over at Halifax. I think in general he showed signs of being a very promising manager in his time with us.

If you do the same as other clubs, only with less money, you’re guaranteed to fail, so you have to take some gambles when you’re poorer than the other teams. In his 2 years here Nicholson tried most of them, with varying success. We signed young players with potential, and they got bullied at times, but over time he developed players. When he was able to attract players of a decent calibre, he got the best out of them, and there’s a lot of them that have gone back into the football league as a result of their time here.

We’ve signed hundreds of players on loan, signed free agents, non-contract players, and filled the squad out with local non-league players in order to concentrate resources on the starting XI.

This summer we tried to add some experience to the squad, which meant you take on some other defect, so we signed players on a downwards trajectory like Pittman and Klukoswi, or with an injury like Gowling and Davis. In general these might not work out every time, but as with for example Jason Fowler, you simply have to accept that if the player didn’t have this defect, he wouldn’t be at the club in the first place. Whatever route you take, there will be a downside that you can be criticised for, but that was the job he had here.

By sacking him after 4 games we left a new manager with the squad he’d assembled, and supporters were quite optimistic for, for the new manager to inherit, which made no sense. Quite a large chunk of our starting XI now is still players Owers inherited, despite signing 15 players himself since September, but an expensive chunk have been wasted as a result of the change.

One of the things I think fans liked was that he kept up the engagement with supporters despite criticism, kept on promoting the club around the bay, and persevered in the role because he was a fan of the club and wanted to make a success of it. Despite results on the pitch for large spells, he was a very popular manager with the majority of the supporters and did a lot of work with the club in the community. The benefits of this might not be seen until we have to sell season tickets based on the back of a relegation battle, but without the galvanizing effects of the manager in the club shop selling season tickets himself. From what I have seen of games at Plainmoor I would imagine that our attendances are based on ‘tickets sold’ rather than fans there on the day, so there’s a huge potential for these to drop away if we don’t have the positivity of a great escape to build on in the summer for season ticket sales.

Think that’s long enough now. Basic summary - he had a very tough situation for his first management position, and did what was asked of him on the pitch, whilst doing a lot in the community off it. He has the potential and work ethic to do very well in management, and a lot of Torquay fans will follow his career closely and wish him well.

[tomogull]

Good balanced post. He did get a right back (Higgins) who has been absent for personal reasons - it was the left back (Davis) who was out for a while that was a useful addition when he returned. Some of the players that Nicholson nurtured, like Young and McGinty, have been consistent performers (despite unwarranted criticism from certain quarters) whereas many of the transient arrivals under Owers have contributed very little during their brief stays.

Cheers Arry. Yes - I don't know my right from my left! I meant Davis, of course, who has proved to be a very good signing since being fit to play. I could have also mentioned the debacle over the non-signing of Kieffer Moore when we had the chance last season.

Gulliball - that's a great post - very fair.

[Arrywithnobrain]

He has split opinion amongst Torquay supporters, so I’ll try to give a balanced view (albeit quite positive). He was a very popular player and retained that as a manager – which in itself was how a lot of it started, as the previous (paid) manager, Chris Hargreaves, was his teammate as a player and wasn’t overly successful in management – not saving us from relegation out of the Football League in 2013/14 and then 13th place in 2014/15, so this was seen as the club doing the same thing again with a popularist choice. He was also seen as the cheap appointment, which he almost certainly was, but that was the position the club was in.

It’s a simple fact that when you're at the bottom of the table and losing a lot of games, you are going to come in for stick – his successor here is finding that out now as well. It doesn’t matter what restraints or circumstances might be there, if you lose games for a long enough period, you’ll come in for criticism, so by the end of his two year spell this had built up - anyone in his position would face the same. A few comments he made also got ridiculed, which is the same issue, as when you’re losing games, anything can be turned into mockery. Again, his successor is finding that out now, that when you try to say positive things (we’re not rubbish anymore, will be out of relegation zone by Christmas etc) you leave yourself open to looking stupid when you lose most weeks.

You’re probably aware that there’s been several off-field issues at our club in recent years. Put simply, and particularly in Kevin Nicholson’s spell here, there was no money. The lottery winner had left, leaving behind a club over spending by £2k per day, and no-one wanted to buy the club, so in the end a local board of 4 people invested £30k each and bought the club. That money didn’t go very far and so everything was cut back to the barest possible bones. The headline grabbing stories were things like players driving themselves to games because we couldn’t afford a coach, or Nicholson himself driving the players to games in a minibus.

That is the background to his spell in charge here – and why despite losing so many games, he is still well liked by a lot of fans here. Once the immediate rage at 5pm on a Saturday subsides, most fans have the knowledge of the club to realise the constraints he worked in and factored this into judgement of his time in charge.

It was his first management job, at a club with no money and off-field battles, so thing’s weren’t perfect, and his win % floated around 30-35% for his spell in charge. With any teams that are losing games there will be things to criticise, but with the infrastructure of the club there simply wasn’t the money for dedicated staff or resources to run the club professionally.

I think the best way he can be judged is against those he directly succeeded and preceded, who were working under reasonably similar situations. He had a far better record on the pitch than his predecessor, and far more experienced, Paul Cox. He’s also got a far better record than the man who replaced him last September, despite the increase in budget that Owers has been afforded. Owers still has time to turn things around, but at present he’s not been able to match the results that Nicholson achieved, and at best from here he’s only going to match what we’ve done for the last few seasons.

It may be a case for us that you don’t quite appreciate what you have until it’s gone. In comparison to where we’ve been as a club in the last 50+ years, pulling off a ‘Great Escape’ from the National League may not be something people want to see as a success, but for the position of the club now, maybe with hindsight those weren’t so bad after all. We’re currently staring regional football in the face - something we haven’t seen since the first half of 1927.

It will be interesting to see how he does in a new role, and I wish him well if he does take over at Halifax. I think in general he showed signs of being a very promising manager in his time with us.

If you do the same as other clubs, only with less money, you’re guaranteed to fail, so you have to take some gambles when you’re poorer than the other teams. In his 2 years here Nicholson tried most of them, with varying success. We signed young players with potential, and they got bullied at times, but over time he developed players. When he was able to attract players of a decent calibre, he got the best out of them, and there’s a lot of them that have gone back into the football league as a result of their time here.

We’ve signed hundreds of players on loan, signed free agents, non-contract players, and filled the squad out with local non-league players in order to concentrate resources on the starting XI.

This summer we tried to add some experience to the squad, which meant you take on some other defect, so we signed players on a downwards trajectory like Pittman and Klukoswi, or with an injury like Gowling and Davis. In general these might not work out every time, but as with for example Jason Fowler, you simply have to accept that if the player didn’t have this defect, he wouldn’t be at the club in the first place. Whatever route you take, there will be a downside that you can be criticised for, but that was the job he had here.

By sacking him after 4 games we left a new manager with the squad he’d assembled, and supporters were quite optimistic for, for the new manager to inherit, which made no sense. Quite a large chunk of our starting XI now is still players Owers inherited, despite signing 15 players himself since September, but an expensive chunk have been wasted as a result of the change.

One of the things I think fans liked was that he kept up the engagement with supporters despite criticism, kept on promoting the club around the bay, and persevered in the role because he was a fan of the club and wanted to make a success of it. Despite results on the pitch for large spells, he was a very popular manager with the majority of the supporters and did a lot of work with the club in the community. The benefits of this might not be seen until we have to sell season tickets based on the back of a relegation battle, but without the galvanizing effects of the manager in the club shop selling season tickets himself. From what I have seen of games at Plainmoor I would imagine that our attendances are based on ‘tickets sold’ rather than fans there on the day, so there’s a huge potential for these to drop away if we don’t have the positivity of a great escape to build on in the summer for season ticket sales.

Think that’s long enough now. Basic summary - he had a very tough situation for his first management position, and did what was asked of him on the pitch, whilst doing a lot in the community off it. He has the potential and work ethic to do very well in management, and a lot of Torquay fans will follow his career closely and wish him well.

Another good balanced post.

[Gulliball]

Just beware if he talks about bringing his "fitness guru" Simon Jeffrey with him. This bloke is a complete charlatan who Nicholson seemed to be in thrall to. His input resulted in the most physically unfit for football squad I have ever seen. This is the source of the earlier tractor tyre comment as the players were supposedly "flipping" tractor tyres as a fitness measure throughout pre season training.

I would say this is a good example to summarise the divide.

Kevin Nicholson as a player enjoyed working with Simon Jeffrey and thought it benefitted his career. His playing career went to the age of what, 35/36 and ended when he took a management job mid-season, so worked well for him.

As manager of a club with no money, using a local gym with someone you know and trust makes quite good sense. If you had more resources you might have a dedicated club employed fitness coach, but we didn't and so used what was available, which was local facilities.

It was like people this summer saying that Rory Fallon was a replacement for Brett Williams and Nicholson should have kept Williams instead. No, Fallon was a non-contract signing, signed because he lived in Devon, was cheap and could hopefully offer something different to the squad. Signing him meant that resources could be freed up to spend on a replacement for Williams in the four other contracted centre forwards we signed.

The tyre flipping was a bit of fun in the summer of 2014/15, after the first great escape. Two players would face off, flipping tyres for one minute, and it was posted around social media for fans to keep engaged with the club during the close season (when our season ticket sales were a club record high and fans felt connected with the club). Despite Angus MacDonald doing this that summer, signing for Barnsley and going straight to the Championship starting XI, and being a very widely used training method in sport, it's become synonymous with our squad being unfit, which is brought up after defeats but disappears during winning runs.