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Matt wrote:I find it hilarious that as soon as a player decides to leave, no not even that, begins to consider leaving us, everyone seems to react in an extreme way. Sure, Brian Saah has been quite good this season but he's obviously not that good otherwise we would've had a much more solid defence, resulting in less goals conceded, less matches lost. Now I accept that we could have a 28 year old Paulo Maldini in our ranks and still have a healthy 'goals against' tally, but it damn sure wouldn't be as obese as it has been this year. Saah will be missed, but as plenty of others have pointed out, easily replaced. At League 2 level nobody is irreplaceable.

Bring on Knill's 'contacts' he's got until we kick off the season to make us a decent side again, and anyone that whinges this early about no signings is a moron. How many of the big clubs, with the exception of Neymar to Barca, have made first team signings this early on? The suns only just bloody come out, how can you expect the summer transfer window to be busy already?! It isn't football manager.

We didnt really concede that many goals, certainly considering the lack of support the back 2 and poke had from the middle and the full backs, and considering we spent 75 minutes a game defending

I find it hilarious that during the season everybody is saying how good these players are, and how without them we would have been relegated months before the season ended, then when rumours about them moving come to surface, then the attitude totally changes, and you make it sound as though they haven't done anything all season?!

Matts a ......!!!! Who thinks he knows the game. He loves his own publicity and enjoys winding everybody else up . I almost feel sorry for him. Perhaps when he has played the game of life a bit longer he might understand a little bit more. I live in hope......

Dutchgull wrote:Matts a ......!!!! Who thinks he knows the game. He loves his own publicity and enjoys winding everybody else up . I almost feel sorry for him. Perhaps when he has played the game of life a bit longer he might understand a little bit more. I live in hope......

He's playing the game of wind-up and so many continually bite.........

Dutchgull wrote:Matts a ......!!!! Who thinks he knows the game. He loves his own publicity and enjoys winding everybody else up . I almost feel sorry for him. Perhaps when he has played the game of life a bit longer he might understand a little bit more. I live in hope......

You'd think with all this life experience, you'd have learned to read properly...

Matt.

Kernowgull wrote:We didnt really concede that many goals, certainly considering the lack of support the back 2 and poke had from the middle and the full backs, and considering we spent 75 minutes a game defending

I guess just the one defensive midfielder wasnt enough to help their cause then?
Or were my eyes playing up and we didnt seem to play 4-1-4-1 or 4-2-3-1 most of the season? (well, until the interim manager shook it up a bit)
You're certainly spot on in respect of spending so much time defending.
Eventually, something will give.....(highest number of goals conceeded at home in L2 by a comfortable margin)......

It's very interesting actually, we seemed to have too many defensive minded players playing yet we were also not that solid...

Unfortunately I think most of the defensive frailties stemmed from the full backs - with neither performing to the levels of the season before.

We did have about 15 defensive midfielders yes, but I wouldnt say they relieved the pressure on the back 4. And whilst I havent looked at the stats to see how many goals we conceded at home, we conceded 11 in the games against Rochdale, Cheltenham, Rovers and Aldershot. All games we attacked in, and picked up 8 points from. So we picked up more points when we concentrated on attacking. Take those games out of the equasion, and we didnt concede that many goals. I guess this kind of supports your arguement that they were protected by the midfield, but we struggled because the midfield didnt get the ball away from the defense for long enough.

="yellowforever"]It's very interesting actually, we seemed to have too many defensive minded players playing yet we were also not that solid...

Unfortunately I think most of the defensive frailties stemmed from the full backs - with neither performing to the levels of the season before.[/

absolutely right, they were bloody dreadful, thats why 1 of them has now gone and the 1 left under contract will be warming the bench. The right hand side was truly shocking at times and the left not much better.

Agree to the above, Knill clearly see's it as a problem too with releasing both RB, It wouldnt surprise me if Ling had offered them both new deals!!

PlainmoorRoar wrote:Agree to the above, Knill clearly see's it as a problem too with releasing both RB, It wouldnt surprise me if Ling had offered them both new deals!!

I think that's a little unfair. Ling signed Olejnik, Poke, Downes, Saah, Howe and a few others who have done really really well for us and some sold for a few quid too. Ok he signed some crap especially one player which i don't need to name but which manager doesn't? It was how he got them to play which contributed to some players struggling IMO, Downes, Saah and Poke have been overrun on many times this season but they have a bit of quality at this level and so were able to cope reasonably well under often severe pressure. Players like Oastler, Nico and some others defensively just couldn't handle being put under this amount of pressure most weeks and regressed. Nico is knocking on but has been an excellent player at this level and Oastler i believe could also have stayed and would have benefitted from a change of management.

Howe (penalties aside) scored us quite a few goals despite largely having p*ss all support or opportunites created for him so goes down as one of Lings best signings but like i said, Howe succeeded DESPITE Ling and not because of him. Can you imagine how many goals he would have scored if we had actually gone out there and attacked?

I think Ling failed himself by adopting an archaic way of playing and refusing to change it rather than because of his signings being crap. Nathan Craig too still has potential but is always played out of position. He could have got so much more out of what he had if he approached football with a different mentality and made better use of the players he had at his disposal.

We can say what we want about Ling and i often have but he has made this club a few quid (which cancels out the cash he wasted on Bodin - couldn't resist, sorry :Oops: ) and got some really good players to come to Torquay and i don't hold the opinion that the reason we struggled last season was because all our players were crap. I hold the opinion that we failed because a negative force was at work last season (and this time it wasn't me! :~D ) and once the rot has set in and this mindset has been absorbed by the players from the management then it becomes almost impossible to turn things around without a spark or a change of scenery. That spark came from Knill and Labadie and I thank the Good Lord it did come.

Pretty much everything that's been said is correct, the full backs were nowhere near the level they played at last season. I for one hope Cruise gets more starts than Nicho this year, as he is a much better footballer. Also agree with the Nathan Craig point, potentially a decent player but will never have the pace to be an out-and-out winger as he seemed to be trying to be, on managers orders of course.

We conceded 62 league goals all season (if the BBC is accurate) and that's not terrible, but obviously not desirable! Its a given that next season we'll need to improve on that, unless Knill convinces a terrific striker to join and our goal difference goes from -7 to a Bayern Munich-esque +80. I just don't think that Saah is necessarily a vital player to make that turnaround happen.

AustrianAndyGull wrote:Howe (penalties aside) scored us quite a few goals despite largely having p*ss all support or opportunities created for him so goes down as one of Lings best signings but like i said, Howe succeeded DESPITE Ling and not because of him. Can you imagine how many goals he would have scored if we had actually gone out there and attacked?

Nothing quite stirs debate and polarises opinion like the question "Is XXX a good player or not?" Andy. I would disagree with your assessment of Howe because:- he hasn’t shown much inclination to be prolific anywhere else and if he made double figures (excluding penalties) it was courtesy of a keeper smacking the ball into him (AFCW?) and deflecting in a goal bound shot (Chesterfield?).

Someone like Izzy outscored him last season from a perennially struggling team, with Hyde and Midson on his shoulder this season (from what I would say were worst teams than us).
2 goals in his 13 games under a more attacking manager isn’t exactly setting the world alight (I know some were whilst the entire team were well out of confidence) but I don’t think we will have that much trouble replacing him.

Just to return to the thread topic, Im not really that fussed if he does go as long as AD signs. Replacing both at the same time would be a big ask but one shouldn’t present an insurmountable problem.

And yes Matt, a lot of problems did come from the full back areas. I lost count of the number of times AD had to slide out to the fullback position because Nico got bypassed further down the field and couldnt get back with the opponent. Cruise must surely start this season unless he has a bad run of form or gets injured.

Surely Cruise will be our number one left back next year. It'll be a shame for Nicho who has been a great servant for the club over the years, but his time has come (and his legs have gone). Cruise showed in the handful of starts he made under Knill that he would be the better option of the two.

As I said at the time, I still think Oastler could have done a job, but if Knill is confident that he will get someone better in, then I'm all for it!

I think Saah was a good player, and someone that if he does leave will be hard to replace. However he is not irreplaceable. Im not going to jump on the bandwaggon and saying he is no good now he is on about leaving us. As we all know he was a good player.

Centre Halves are quite easily to come by in this division, Strikers on the other hand are not.

I hope he stays but if not, Knill will have to replace and replace well. He is already speaking to other players, so we shall see how it pans out. D-Day for the players is the 10th June. So we shall see.