Alan Knill - CONFIRMED

[JamieE]

I don't care who it is right now as long as we have a football manager! We need 13 points from 14 games - surely he can grind that out??

[Plymouth Gull]

Update on the main page, about his past.

[Glostergull]

Anyway, his surname is all too familiar at the club at the moment so he can p*ss off! :~D

oh my life that slipped under the radar quietly but it was a good un

[HardofHerringGull]

I seem to remember everyone slagging Ling off when he first arrived...a short time later we thought the sun shone out of his arse ...sadly, that sun has gone down now.

Looking at his stats, it seems that he's won about a third of his matches in charge, so if he does that with our remaining games we should just about be fine!

[chippygull]

"The Iron were sadly on the decline and Knill was unable to save the club from relegation . Knill departed Scunthorpe last October and certainly fits the bill of an experienced manager."

Umm... is this the experience we want?

[Bitchie Renault]

What a sad sack full of plebs we have posting on here this morning, the worst possible example of ill-informed and negative excuses for fans you could imagine. It's exactly the same kind of narrow minded sentiments when Ling was appointed. Questioning his record and even his looks, pathetic!!! Ling had a nightmare at Cambridge, came here and nearly got us automatic promotion in his first season, nobody knows what will happen with Knill, yet all the doom mongers on here seem to be predicting the end of the world, you should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Give the guy a chance, he has 300+ games experience which is 300+ games MORE experience than any of you lot have. His record at Scnuthorpe (in recent years a bigger club than us) was a point a game, not brilliant but what we need right now. Before that his record at Bury (in recent years a club comparible in size to us) was 1.5 points per game, ie very good.
I shall give Knill my full backing, if he fails I doubt it'll be for a lack of effort or ability. My much more major concerns are that the players confidence is torn to shreds and may be difficult to rebuild in such a short time and this is being heightened by the appauling, embaressing attitude of some of the fans on here and at the games. My gut feeling is that we'll scrape through, just get enough points to stay up, but I'm not ruling out relegation as our current form is terrible, but I put that down to a combination of many factors some of which Knill should be able to address. Good luck Alan and good luck Torquay United.

[The Farmers Friend]

His record doesn't look great, but I'll go along with the 'at least he's a manager' sentiment.

As others have posted, I can't imagine the prospect of being interim manager of a freefalling Division 4 team in a footballing backwater attracted applications from the biggest names in management, but I don't believe the current squad is that bad - their confidence is shot to pieces and they desperately need some kind of direction. A change of voice and even a vaguely coherent gameplan could see us out of the woods. Hopefully Knill at least has that much about him.

[PhilGull]

Well done to the board, having read the article on the OS I think we all have every reason to be optimistic. It seems they are ready to put their money where their mouths are and back our new boss to beat relegation.

I am a little disappointed by the amount of negativity. Please, don't behave like the plastic Chelsea fans and boo the man before he's even started. He's come in with a job to do. His first game is against the best team in the division, do not expect miracles straight away!

[Dave_Pougher]

Defensive maybe,,, can't understand the criticism there tbh. Surely thats what we need right now esp in the next two games.
A couple of loan signings and even one decent result, intially, will change things a great deal and give us pricesslessly nedeed points. We asked people to act, and they have. Regardless of what anyone thinks about anyone in charge this guy, for the sake of League football, HAS to be given our support.

[AustrianAndyGull]

What a sad sack full of plebs we have posting on here this morning, the worst possible example of ill-informed and negative excuses for fans you could imagine. It's exactly the same kind of narrow minded sentiments when Ling was appointed. Questioning his record and even his looks, pathetic!!! Ling had a nightmare at Cambridge, came here and nearly got us automatic promotion in his first season, nobody knows what will happen with Knill, yet all the doom mongers on here seem to be predicting the end of the world, you should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Give the guy a chance, he has 300+ games experience which is 300+ games MORE experience than any of you lot have. His record at Scnuthorpe (in recent years a bigger club than us) was a point a game, not brilliant but what we need right now. Before that his record at Bury (in recent years a club comparible in size to us) was 1.5 points per game, ie very good.
I shall give Knill my full backing, if he fails I doubt it'll be for a lack of effort or ability. My much more major concerns are that the players confidence is torn to shreds and may be difficult to rebuild in such a short time and this is being heightened by the appauling, embaressing attitude of some of the fans on here and at the games. My gut feeling is that we'll scrape through, just get enough points to stay up, but I'm not ruling out relegation as our current form is terrible, but I put that down to a combination of many factors some of which Knill should be able to address. Good luck Alan and good luck Torquay United.

I agree BR, although i'll stop short of calling everyone plebs.

Knill is in, we need points so let's get on with it. End of. We wanted someone, we've got someone and so he needs support and encouragement otherwise we may as well accept relegation is a formality.

[BFC]

When Alan Knill took over at Gigg Lane there was a good chance Bury FC were on their way to non league.
He stopped the rot and we did very well in the closing part of the season, finishing 13th.
Over the next two seasons we played some lovely stuff and he took us to the very brink of promotion.
I don't know how much brass you have available to spend, but does like to spend it, believe me!
His main fault I.M.O. is a reluctance/inability to change things through the course of the game.

I personally think he is a good coach and I hope he does a good job for you.
Bury fans in general have little time for him due to the bad timing of his departure to Scunny, although the feeling is mutual due to the grief the traveling Shakers fans gave him at Scunny last season.

Good luck Gulls, the way we are carrying on I've a funny feeling you will be playing us next season!!

[Plymouth Gull]

Thanks for that BFC, good to get a bit of positive insight. I don't think we have much spare money but it'll be interesting to see if the board do give him a bit to add to the squad. We don't need much, the team is good but for so long we've been playing with terrible tactics.

[SuperNickyWroe]

Forgive me hector, i'm a bit slow sometimes mate.

what do you mean? sometimes.............???????????

[Jeff]

Some of the reaction on here is ridiculous.

For a start, who did we expect to come in as interim manager, seriously? Mourinho? Guardiola? Of course not. We should be greatful that its someone who has recent management experience.

People were clamouring for Leroy - why? Ok so we had 2 good seasons under him, the other 1 and a half were us in decline as Leroy was unable to adequately build a team from scratch. And his last managerial appointment - 5 years ago? - was a disaster. I'll always love Leroy for what he did for us in 2003/4, but his cv is scarcely better than Alan Knills.

Which brings me onto Knills previous record. Rotherham - first managerial job, club in disarray (administration etc). Could hardly have done much more with the tools on offer. Scunthorpe - a club not much bigger than us really, we spent many years at the same level, with them more regularly fluctuating between the 3rd and 4th tiers. To fail to keep them in the 2nd tier, and then stick in the lower end of the 3rd is about where I'd expect to see them so again, not a disaster.

And these bookend his spell at Bury. What I remember from his spell there is a club definitely no bigger than ours, packed with young players playing decent football and having a very successful spell. But of course, that doesn't fit with the doom-mongers so we can't talk about that, it has to be focussing on relegation.

The most important things for me are:

We asked for a change and we got it. Now we have to get behind it. The board are making the right noises too about backing him financially so they need to put their money where their mouths are and let him make the changes he needs

It's a completely fresh approach to the side. He knows nobody and owes them no favours. Hopefully, under performers like Nico will no longer be automatic picks due to "grand-father rights". Hopefully Knill will take one look at Craig and see a central midfielder. Hopefully he'll advocate 4-4-2.

Now is the time to stop bleating about this, that and the other and get behind the team. We aren't going to get any other chances to change things, so now it's all or nothing

[AustrianAndyGull]

Cheers for that BFC. Like Nick says, we have some decent players but they have been used badly and are now low on confidence. If Alan can get some spirit going and tweak a few things then we should be ok.

Oi and leave it Super!!