Super Kev To You

[brucie]

Its ludicrous to make any comparison with Nicholson and Owers should Nico get the Halifax job. Owers has had to put up with about eight players on his wage bill who were not fit purpose.

I don't think Merse has any obsession with Nicholson at all but the primary reason we have been marooned at the bottom of the league all season was because of the poor squad assembled by Nicholson in the summer.

[SenorDingDong]

Gulliball mentioned Chris Hargreaves, which is an interesting point. Hargreaves came to the job via very similar circumstances, very well regarded ex player, had never made it a secret he wanted the job despite only limited experience beforehand (although more than Nicho). He was practically worshipped as jesus around Plainmoor, the fact he had a passing resemblence probably helped. By the time he left the club as manager, he was regarded fairly poorly by most and his reputation has never recovered. Nicholson on the other hand left the club with most fans still respecting him and thanking him for his efforts regardless of their views of him as a manager. That should give you some indication to his character.

As for him as a manager, he's a very mixed bag. Many of us never thought he should have been appointed due to his lack of ticking the required boxes, regardless of his character and his ties to the club. What you'll be getting is the following:

Pros
+ a man motivator who can get performances out of players in the second half of the season. Weirdly though his teams seem to suffer in the first half of the season - often putting in lacklusture performances until something clicks.
+ Will give 100% and have a strong relationship with the fans. Can be seen in him driving the team bus during our worst financial periods, he's more than happy to muck in across the club and is very effective at promoting and representing the club in the local community.
+ Can develop players. If he lucks into a useful raw talent then he can develop them well, McDonald, Smith, Blissett, Moore and others have benefitted from his management. However this is offset by his limited contacts book.

Neutrals
+/- Someone who will be pally with the players, give them nicknames and defend them to the earth. He's not a shouter and a bawler, he wont rip it out of the players in public. This can be viewed as a posititve or a negative based upon your views and the characters at your club. He builds a good bond with the players but there's also the feeling that he'll let his favourites off lightly and maybe doesn't have the authority he should (think Steve McClaren with England)

Cons
- Tactically poor. If the team goes behind, don't expect him to turn things around or spring any surprises. Generally speaking the team capitulated when they went behind. They were utterly lacklusture during the first four matches of this season, never looking like winning. Furthermore he signed Brett Williams on probably the highest wage in the squad, a well known National League luxury player, then froze him out of the starting line up for 2/3rds of 16/17 because he wasn't 'tracking back enough' and putting in enough effort. This despite everyone knowing that Williams is basically the 'Conference Berbatov' and you have to build your team around him. When Nicholson got over this and restored Williams to the team our form revived and we went on a run that kept us up.
- Fitness. His teams were often blowing out of their arse after 60 minutes due to an over focus on bulking up - he basically views a local gym owner as a fitness guru. Our squad have become noticeably fitter this season since he was sacked. If you're lucky he won't bring along Simon Jeffreys and will have learned his lesson.
- Poor at team building. He built his own team in 16/17 and nearly relegated it before it kicked into life in the final third of the season. Regardless of the financial constraints, the budget here still wasn't the worst in the league. In 17/18 he had an increased budget and signed a number of players on decent contracts that have been crocked for prolonged periods or utterly flattered to deceive (Gowling, Klukowski, Gosling, Davis, Clarke, Higgins, Pittman). Some of these players came with known injury histories. His signing of Williams and trying to make him into a different player at 28 also speaks to this weakness/lack of knowledge.
- Lack of contacts. Nicholson doesn't come with a 'black book' of NLS/NLN raw diamonds and up and coming players from the lower leagues. If you're operating on a small budget and should be looking for these players to build your squad/develop and sell on then he's not your man. Fans for a long time have said TQU should operate in this way to overcome our geographic issues while building upon the rather good infrastructure for this league, which is one of the reasons why some were against his appointment.


If you do appoint him then it'll be make or break for him as a manager. If he suceeds then he'll prove some here wrong, if he fails then it'll confirm what some of us have been saying for a while. During his time here I would probably have rated him a 7/10 - did well in a very trying situation but enough concerns that I can't say he was excellent, nor that another manager wouldn't have produced the same results. I feel like his skills are better suited to being an assistant manager/coach but I'll be more than happy if I'm proven wrong.

[SenorDingDong]

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.

Be be fair, when Nathan Blissett joined Plymouth they were scathing about his fitness and didn't play him in full matches for quite a while.

[MellowYellow]

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??

If a universally popular manager and personality such as Claudio Ranieri can be sacked nine months after producing arguably the greatest story in British sporting history then all bets are off when it comes to measuring a managers value to the club and subsequent job security. All we are left with is our opinions as to whether the managers attributes were good or bad.

In possibly the most dire times in our club history, Nicholson for me was a good ambassador for the club, was determined; had good man-management and motivational skill and a 'never give up attitude. As a rookie manager he was not without his weaknesses and the biggest for me was the lack of tactical consistency.

In terms of player recruitment, with the addition of another player signed today that is 40 players signed up this season and over half of these (22 v 18) were brought to the club after Nicho departure, yet our current management team has only managed to muster our 6th win in 33 matches. And this with players who are allegedly fitter and stronger.

Whilst Nicho engineered two escapes he was not seen as good enough to manage the team (under new ownership). I believe Nicho would jump at the chance to come back and prove a point but I also believe the intense, relentless pressure of his life as Torquay manager, caught in the constant intense beam of the supporter and media spotlight would continue to take their toll and feel he will be far better off to take his CV titled 'Houdini of the Riviera' to another club.

[Teigngull]

Don't forget the fact that the two escapes were engineered out of his own making & of the two & a bit seasons he was here as manager we didn't really improve in fact as I mentioned on another thread he probably assembled the most unfittest & worst squad ever to wear a TUFC shirt. Sorry probably what you don't want to hear but opinions are subjective.

[MellowYellow]

Don't forget the fact that the two escapes were engineered out of his own making & of the two & a bit seasons he was here as manager we didn't really improve in fact as I mentioned on another thread he probably assembled the most unfittest & worst squad ever to wear a TUFC shirt. Sorry probably what you don't want to hear but opinions are subjective.

No problem. As I said "All we are left with is our opinions as to whether the managers attributes were good or bad" and there appear a lot of them. But as you rightly say opinions are subjective although that does not stop some thinking their opinions are objective.

I suppose the only question left is are we any better off having sacked him? Back to the opinions again, I guess?

[desperado]

Whatever you say about Nicholson, he is certainly the most talked about Torquay manager in our history -
he just wont go away

[merse btpir]

You think so?

Frank O'Farrell managed us on three separate occasions and he was far more talked about as well as accomplished and being being a proper legend.

[Yorkieandy]

People forget that to make up for the lack of quality players at the club when Owers took over, Owers himself has added some real crap. If he was sacked tomorrow then it could be argued that he's also left behind a pretty uninspiring squad for the next incumbent. Yes he's added a few players that have proved excellent such as Romain, and the addition of Sokolik looks promising but for every Romain there is a Reece Mitchell.

Nico cared deeply about the club and more importantly us supporters and he went well above and beyond the call of duty during his time as manager driving the team bus etc etc and whilst that doesn't necessarily make you a good football manager, in my eyes it makes you a good, decent person and i'd rather have someone like Nico in charge than a **** like Steve Evans who no doubt would be a success but he'd also be a foul mouthed, selfish, cheating, arrogant arsehole.

Just my opinion and i'm sure there will be fans who would want Peter Sutcliffe in charge so long as he won football matches but i'm of the view that the qualities of a person are as much as important as the standard of job they are doing (unless they are a surgeon or dentist :~D ). Nico kept the club up twice against all the odds and therefore fulfilled his remit. Owers has had nearly all season to achieve the same and it looks like Nico may end up trumping him. It's nearly March. You cannot now blame Nico for the clubs position in the league.

I find Nico a hardworking, genuine man whereas i find Hargreaves a showy, shallow one. I have no respect whatsoever for Hargreaves both as a man and as a professional but Nico, i hope he gets the Halifax job and succeeds because he deserves it.

He'll work hard and will have learned a lot from his experience at Torquay and i'm sure that can only benefit Halifax.

[lucy6lucy]

Good luck if he gets the job. Nicholson is a family man, so up rooting his entire family to Halifax would be a massive decision.
I personally would rather get over the Nicholson factor and focus on our current relegation scrap

[Teigngull]

I really couldn't give two hoots whether Nicholson gets the Halifax job or not, why not ? You may ask.
Because their situation doesn't bother me one iota , I am a dyed in the wool, cut me in half & I'll bleed yellow & blue Torquay United supporter, I supported Kevin Nicholson whilst he was our manager as I did with Mike Green, Bruce Rioch, The late great Cyril Knowles ( who I still worship as one of our best ever ) up to the likes of Eddie May, Roy Mac, Paul Buckle etc etc etc but they have now all moved on , so they bare no relevance to our situation , our opinions differ immensely at times, but we should have one goal , get behind Gary Owers he is our manager until other persons decide otherwise, then we should get behind him (or her!).
Would I have Nicholson back instead of Owers ? In a nutshell, NO THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

[MellowYellow]

Nico kept the club up twice against all the odds and therefore fulfilled his remit. Owers has had nearly all season to achieve the same

That is not correct. Nicho remit was to keep us in the National League - mission accomplished! Owers remit was to make us promotion contenders - mission failed! Just saying.

[lucy6lucy]

People forget that to make up for the lack of quality players at the club when Owers took over, Owers himself has added some real crap. If he was sacked tomorrow then it could be argued that he's also left behind a pretty uninspiring squad for the next incumbent. Yes he's added a few players that have proved excellent such as Romain, and the addition of Sokolik looks promising but for every Romain there is a Reece Mitchell.

Nico cared deeply about the club and more importantly us supporters and he went well above and beyond the call of duty during his time as manager driving the team bus etc etc and whilst that doesn't necessarily make you a good football manager, in my eyes it makes you a good, decent person and i'd rather have someone like Nico in charge than a **** like Steve Evans who no doubt would be a success but he'd also be a foul mouthed, selfish, cheating, arrogant arsehole.

Just my opinion and i'm sure there will be fans who would want Peter Sutcliffe in charge so long as he won football matches but i'm of the view that the qualities of a person are as much as important as the standard of job they are doing (unless they are a surgeon or dentist :~D ). Nico kept the club up twice against all the odds and therefore fulfilled his remit. Owers has had nearly all season to achieve the same and it looks like Nico may end up trumping him. It's nearly March. You cannot now blame Nico for the clubs position in the league.

I find Nico a hardworking, genuine man whereas i find Hargreaves a showy, shallow one. I have no respect whatsoever for Hargreaves both as a man and as a professional but Nico, i hope he gets the Halifax job and succeeds because he deserves it.

He'll work hard and will have learned a lot from his experience at Torquay and i'm sure that can only benefit Halifax.

Interesting analysis from a guy that once supported Torquayunited then decided to support York city and then when the shit hit the fan, decided to support Torquayunited again, and in all this time refuses to attend a Torquayunited match. What a fan.

And Andy I have full respect for you, just think you have lost the plot as a Torquayunited fan.

[Yorkieandy]

You are inaccurate, have no idea and are making assumptions. Grow up.

[Colorado Gull]

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.

Great post. Yours, too, tomogull.