Like to start off by saying fair play to you guys this season, I'm sure that when Martin Ling was appointed there were a few of you who thought "What the F***???"'m s but god how I would love to have Ling here at the moment instead of your old boss!!!
The pressure is really on him at the moment and there was a loud chant of "We want Buckle out" listening to the radio at the final whistle today.
After the game out of about 20 fans who called in only about 2 still support him while others are baying for his blood.
There are a few rumours on twitter that there was a emergency board meeting tonight and a fan claims on Facebook that he has been given the bullet.
When we took PB off you in the summer I'm sure that you were angry and upset but there is always that old saying....
"Karma will bite you in the ass" :Oops:
Good luck for the rest of the season, BTW do you want Beven and Zebroski back??? Please take em'
Oasis, we weren't angry that you took him, indeed some of us were quielty pleased. What pissed us all off was how he chose to leave and how he left some of our better players out of contract and available for him to take as he pleased.
Most of us are laughing at him, praying he falls flat on his arse but I don't think you will find many who harbour any ill-will towards your Club. Buckle is arrogant and stubborn, if you give him enough time he will turn it around but I expect most are like me in hoping that you don't
Southampton Gull wrote:Oasis, we weren't angry that you took him, indeed some of us were quielty pleased. What pissed us all off was how he chose to leave and how he left some of our better players out of contract and available for him to take as he pleased.
Most of us are laughing at him, praying he falls flat on his arse but I don't think you will find many who harbour any ill-will towards your Club. Buckle is arrogant and stubborn, if you give him enough time he will turn it around but I expect most are like me in hoping that you don't
TBH I think he is close to getting the bullet.
We got Top of the table Southend next week, then the cup game and then Swindon at home, We may win the cup game but if and at this moment in time I'd say there is a good chance we lose both our next 2 league games I think he is a gonna.
There were rumours that the board were interested in Gary Johnson before Buckle took over but weren't prepared to pay the compensation fee for him, now he has been sacked and still got his apartment close to Bristol
I have read some of the comments on your forum. No disrespect to Bristol from me although the attack on the Barnet coach is worrying, nit their fault.
Paul Buckle did a good job for us, there were many who didnt like him but in the end he ot us out of the conference and to the final of league one playoffs on ltd budget. Yes it was the maaner of the leaving that hurt us, and we felot that becuase the decision had been made BEFORE the playoff final that we didnt really give it our all, that hurt.
From PB's carreer point of virew the expetctations at Bristol are higher, and they should be, with the attendances and money available. AT Torquay the hard part of the job is to get a decent team togehter on little money, and that is hard, very hard. We only have to have a few injuries to key players and we could be in truoble.
I dont like to wish ill on anyone, and I guess if PB is sacked he will get a huge payout anyway, so form that point of view hes in a good position. What does a Bristol Manager earn do you reckon?
I feel sorry for you in that you have been sold a pup. But Caveat Emptor has been good advice since Roman times.
Buckle was over rated by many, not least by himself.
He is no great loss to TUFC. In fact we have ended up with a better manager and got rid of someone on a ridiculous one year rolling contract negotiated by our ex Chief Executive who was also on a one year rolling contract. Least said about him the better too.
"A day without football is a day lost" (Ernst Happel)
"Look at the (Plainmoor) stars, Look how they shine for you, And everything you do, Yeah they were all yellow" (C. Martin)
As Dave says, there is no animosity or ill feeling towards your club oasisgas, apart from the unicellular probable drug addled benefit claimants who bricked the Barnet supporters coach. Is it because Barnet only took about 3 fans? I'd have liked to see you do that to Grimsby or Hull fans. You wouldn't see next week you bunch of cavemen. As neal says Buckle will always be thanked for getting us out of the conference but the manner of his exit displayed no respect for anyone involved with torquay and for that i wish him the worst of luck. Honesty and plain speaking make you respected, Cloughie would tell you that if he were alive today.
Strangely enough it was Pope Gregory the 9th inviting me for drinks aboard his steam yacht, the saucy sue currently wintering in montego bay with the England cricket team and the Balanese Goddess of plenty.
The biggest issue I ever had with Buckle was that he signed players he liked and then thought "where the hell do I play them". We just are not getting that problem with Ling this year, he is master of technical play and signs the right players to the style of play. He also seems to involve players in his decisions, who would have thought we would see Ellis play up front this year? (allbeit for just 25 minutes) or we would see Mansell move from Right back? or see O'Kane playing down the entire centre of the pitch from penalty spot to penalty spot.
Players are clearly happier on the whole this year and this shines through, I just cannot see Rovers becoming a happy squad under Buckle, it is very much his way or no way.
Rovers, without question, have a fantastic squad, but without a strong minded director of football pulling the strings, I do not think Buckle has what it takes to turn Rovers around.
I think Buckle will be managing Hemel Hempsted Town by this time next year
I suppose I've always been a Buckle supporter, simply because when he left us if you look back at the bigger picture, did he do a good job here? absolutely. The club has come back from the dead and is a respectable League club again that's all you can ask. How we got there, his decisions along the way there are obviously issues with some of them.
Where I agree entirely with Dave is I wasn't angry to see him go, because simply I knew he was going to leave sooner or later. That goes for all of our players as well, including the ones still here. I respect the fact that if they have any ambition in the game whatsoever then their dream isn't to play for Torquay United for 20 years. What annoyed me and I am convinced this is the case was he knew he was going for a while and as such didn't secure the futures of some of our key players, namely Branston and Bevan. Now there is no way those 2 would have been surplus to requirements this season at the beginning of the year and not offering them fair deals here was ludicrous.....or not if you have no intention of staying yourself and you want to take them with you without having to pay fees which clubs at this level can't afford many of. That annoyed me because it showed a complete lack of respect for the club that had given Exeter's assistant manager a shot at management.
Moving on from that you are underachieving, there is no doubt about that but you aren't the only ones. Northampton and especially Bradford continually underachieve. Just perhaps your fans haven't given a) this league the credit it deserves - whilst the quality isn't always there the teams are very evenly matched and it's a tough league and b) have underestimated the job that needed to be done as the Rovers manager this year.
Lets be honest your club has been on a downward spiral for a while, the hardest thing to do is turn around a losing mentality within a football club. The only way of doing it is radical change (like you've done) but this also can take time to bed in. Which it clearly is taking time.
Sometimes the grass isn't greener and whilst I wouldn't argue Rovers is a bigger club than Torquay, was it a better job than his at Torquay?
Yes our budget was going to be smaller this year but he had a safe job, people here would accept where you are in the table this season and like Ling has done he could have brought some youngsters in and built the team around some younger players then maybe pushed forward in the long term. Making a sideways step to rovers to completely revamp a whole club whilst playing with the expectations of must win every week when that's not ever going to happen. I'm not sure he chose his next job too wisely.
Also like Dave i am convinced if you give him the time he will turn it round, he isn't afraid of big decisions and his record suggests he gets the majority of them right. When Hargreaves was moved on and we signed a young kid called Eunan O Kane there was outrage here. I'm wondering what folk think of that move now? So if he bombs Campbell out to replace him with a youngster it might just be for the best!
Ultimately for us I think Ling is doing tremendously well, we're above where I thought we'd be, we're miles away from the bottom 2 which is fantastic and the main thing. I'd be amazed if we didn't have another bad run at some point but if our gap to that part of the table is massive then it shouldn't matter too much hopefully.
Good accurate realistic post Royal, the only thing i would take issue with is the Bevan/Branston point. There wasnt enough money in the budget at that time to match the offers they wanted, without moving some other players on. Bevs was Gillingham bound before getting the call from Rovers (lets face it, they needed to replace Julain). Branston, as we know, went to Bradford for the big pay rise.
You are certainly right about the losing mentality side of things. Its something that also seems to be infesting the likes Bradford and Northampton as you say.
It's a fair point but even if the budget is smaller you try to tie up the key cogs of the side. Branston in particular said he'd have signed a new deal if he was offered one back in January and we never offered him anything until far too late. A token offer which was bettered elsewhere. If we couldn't afford both I think most would have taken Branston then gone for a keeper, as we've found replacing Branston has been harder than replacing Bevan.
It may have been partly budget reasons but I honestly think there was an alternative motive here in that Buckle wanted all these players (he offered Branno something at Rovers as well) and knew he could let their contracts run out and then hoover them up for free rather than having to pay for them. Which MIGHT have been out of Rovers reach.
Left a sour feeling for me towards him but ultimately I'll always look back at his tenure with more fondness than disappointment. He along with the board have taken us from the wilderness back to where we belong and for that I'll alaways be grateful. One look to the Conference table and you can see some bigger clubs than us struggling desperately to get out of that, it's a horrid league and Buckle's teams fared superbly in it.
Like most - no animosity towards Rovers - just towards Buckle
He played us very selfishly - towards the end of the season it was all about him rather than the club, if he had been more honest he would have some goodwill from many fans but he soured that badly.
On his managerial capability unfortunately his words are better than his actions. He has an eye for a good player and can also persuade them to join a club - he also had some good tactics and knew when to give his players a rollicking. Finally he also wasn't frightened to haul players off at half time and change the system but...
his main failings were
man management - he fell out with some key players
playing players out of position
not realising what was going wrong even though the whole crowd could see it (semi v Exeter comes to mind)
arrogantly thinking he was Cloughie when he obviously isn't
short arse syndrome - always straining to look bigger than he is...
Would another manager have got us out of Conference? I don't honestly know but I was really pleased when he left.
Some great points made royalgull, and that is the good side of TUFC under Buckle.
I also have no hatred towards Rovers(except maybe the few fans who invaded our forum in June/July and August), my beef is with Buckle, for exactly the same reasons as most of the others who feel agreived about the way he went about his departure. I don't like him as a person, and I think Rovers fans are by now, well aware of why he was disliked by so many and I often frequent the Rovers forum just to have a peek and enjoy the 'i told you so' moments.
Most managers would/should've got us out of the conference, given the budget available in the first couple of years of his tenure, I also appreciate the acheivement of actually doing so, but the following 2 years were unfortunately repetative in terms of his press conferences and excuses. Small budget, small club, loww attendances, small budget, geographical location, the woodwork, small budget, you get the picture!
Yes, there were some good days under Buckle, the play off final v Cambridge at Wembley and the F.A Cup tie v Yeovil at Plainmoor were both brilliant days, they were blighted by some horrific performances when it mattered like the play off semi V Exeter, the boxing day game v Exeter, last season's play off final, the f.a. trophy final, the Crawley Town f.a. cup game to name a few.
Buckle also has the fantastic ability to pick a fight with anyone, for any reason, at any time. The list of players he has fallen out with are too long to mention, but safe to say that the one thing most of them have in common, is that they were(probably) more popular with the fans than Buckle, and he can't handle that.
I've probably gone on for long enough now, but just want to say that I don't hate the guy, but I really want him to fall flat on his face at Rovers, and maybe find a little more humility to realise that those who help you on your way up, will also be the ones to watch you fall. Whether they offer sympathy and help you to your feet again, is really down to how you treat them first time around. Something Buckle could do very well to remember.
as other's have said, Oasis, it's genuinely not Bristol Useless that we are laughing at (no more so than any other L2 side, although you do seem to have a disproportionate number of fans who are far too big for their boots, maybe that's just unfair exposure given the circumstances...) It's more Buckle, who jumped ship to a club in the same division, despite giving it mouth for 2 years about being ambitious, and now it's biting him in the arse and we are delighted.
Once he's been sacked, good luck to you, until then, here's hoping for defeat, after defeat, after humbling, humiliating, embarrassing, heavy defeat.
