FA Trophy Quarter-Final vs. FC United of Manchester

[Neal]

I agree calling FCUM a "Park" team is an insult and is meant to be of course!

We are a "Park" team to the other teams in Manchester then.

Of course they ARE NOT a "Park" team and in a few seasons time will most probably pass us by in the pyramid of football and will be able to call us that. But hopefully they will have a bit more decency than that!

[Scott Brehaut]

The FCUM official radio, which is (I'm reliably informed) usually run by a couple of guys in the stands, had the following snippets of "comedy gold" on Saturday during their commentary:

What are Torquay playing? WWF?

That Torquay player is a dick and an arsehole

That number four for Torquay is a cart horse

Hilarious....

[tomogull]

Neal and Ollie, clearly the only two supporters on here who have actually seen football before.

Of course our game plan was to knock it over the top for Bowman. A) we aren't going to get any time on the ball and B) FCUM are going to play a high line, compress the pitch, deny our lads time and prevent superior technical ability from hurting them. It's all so crashingly obvious, yet here is this place, as usual, rammed to the gills with people who clearly can't see past the respective league positions of the teams involved. It never had worked like that and it never will. Neal knows it because he's familiar with the FA Cup and similar. Ollie the same. Quite what the rest of you are yabbering on about is beyond me. Matt.

Fully agree that cup games are great levellers - e.g. Man Utd/Cambridge. But come on, Matt - take off your blinkers. Even allowing for playing against a side from a lower league, we were very poor on Saturday (as we have been in several recent games).

I watched the match from Bristow's Bench for the very first time. You get a different perspective looking down on the pitch than you do from the Pop side and we really did look like a side of headless chickens (apart from Ives who showed great composure for a young lad). I have no idea what the stats are for the match but I think they must have had more corners and shots on/off target than we did. Apart from the goal (which was well taken by Bowman) we didn't cause their keeper any trouble. If they'd had a bit of composure up front, we would have lost. As for compressing the pitch as you say, in my view Hargreaves played into their hands by not using the width of the pitch. It wasn't until Chappell came on and stretched them on the wing that we began to look a threat. Ajala didn't get much joy on the other wing as he was kept well in check by their right back who had a good game.

But hey - it's putting the ball in the back of the net that counts and that's what we managed to do in the end. So let's move on to Halifax/Wrexham in the semis

[nickbrod]

Non-League Paper stats:

Torquay FCUnited
4 Shots on Target 2
8 Shots off Target 6
4 Corners 8
13 Fouls 12
2 Offside 1
0 Yellow cards 2

Star Man: Levi Ives

[RussianGull]

The NLP also said that we weren't any good, except for one good pass and a shot well struck.