FL2: Bristol Rovers v Torquay 20 Oct '12

Back from the Memorial stadium so thought I put some pearls of wisdom on here for people to dis-agree with !!

Lovely day for football and pich looked great !! Interesting team selection by Ling and felt confident. The game itself started well for us nice passing and movemnet for frist 15 mins then we stood off and let the Gas get back into it. Then mix up between Poke and Downes allowed Eaves to lift the ball over the keeper !!! Minsutes later needless free kick given away and bang 2 nil !!! Blame must lie with Poke, for poor set up of wall and beaten at near post !!

BRFC continued to press then Oastler sent off for second bookable offence (more on that later) We lost all shape and were battered by hung on till half time

Second half one change the ineffective Lathrope repalced by Leadbitter. A more positive approach from the Gulls then and we pressed well. Then lovely run by Rene led to a curling shot form edge of box and we were back in it. Even better then as BRFC failed to take advantage of the extra man, lofted free kick from Nicho and Downes unmarked nodded in 2 all !!!

But the Gas then sussed that by stretching the pay to both flanks this would work well !!! Crosses galore fired in and bodies put on the line and we weere holding out with the glimmer of a breakaway chance, one did arise but Bodin's lack of striker awareness, not getting into the 6 yard box lead to the chance going begging

Then the dam was finally breached stinging drive form the edge of the box was parried by Poke but we failed to react and that was that. The game then petered out and we were left thinking if only !!!

As for performances my MOM was Rene, he battled and battled away and proved what an asset he is !!!

Others:

Poke - poor, great shot stopper but not dominant at all, not the keeper we had on loan

Oastler -for people to rave about him !!!! Madness he had a shocker, stupid forst foul, could have been a straight red then allowed the winger to run at him then barge him over !! IDIOT, and bearing in mind recent performances a friggin LIABILITY

Nicho - OK and looked knackered come the end

Saah - so so, got in tackles but not dominant

Downes - good, stromg but had a his hands full with Eaves

Craig - In effective and looked lost

Mansell - Headless and tried hard but not a patch on last year

Easton - reasonable but nothing to get excited about

Lathrope - not in the game really

Bodin - poor AGAIN !!! 75k for that !!! He's a having a laff !!

Howe - MOM

Subs: Jarvis - huffed and puffed, Leadbitter - eager and could develop well, Cruise - Ok

So in summary will the real TUFC stand up more often, and the loss can be put down to bad keeping by Poke and stupidity from Oastler, he is not worthy of the shirt !!!

Finally can we have some-one like Eaves on loan and also Lund at RB - quality

Okay let the fun begin !!!!

Must admit the policy of finding answers within the squad is starting to grate a bit and I am slowly losing interest. Of course we must allow every single one of our full time squad the chance to shine but the "consistent" performances are just not there other than Rene Howe that is and he will no doubt be traded in for more cash as soon as the opportunity comes along ( January) for more training pitch facilities etc and once again we will have to find answers from within the squad!!
There will no doubt come a point when Lingy will dip his toe in the transfer market but I hope it wont be a "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted" scenario.
We look a typical mid table side and our form and performances reflect this, my fear is that without some new blood and a little bit of inspiration from the manager we could end up sliding down the table and its almost as if we are content to sit safely in mid table. For me this season has been a huge anti climax so far despite some of the many positives its always Saturdyas results or the prospect of new blood that really matters and keep fans interested.
Yep sad to admit it but this season is boring me to death.

I've noticed with increasing regularity the words "worst performance I've seen from us for a long time". Now obviously there is some exaggeration otherwise we'd be getting worse and worse with every bad performance, which isn't quite happening. However, it has to be noted that they still must be pretty poor performances for people to be saying this

Petef's post has summed up what I've been feeling for weeks reading people's match reports. We're in no man's land now - on our day, capable of winning, but too often we put in shocking performances. Rovers aren't a good side - they're 20th in the table and easily threw away their lead to a side with 10 men today. Aldershot also threw away a lead against us and have been poor generally, hence why they're 23rd - with both it seems that perhaps our comebacks said as much about the teams we were playing rather than us. Accrington, who we beat last week, lost 5-0 to Oxford who had previously been struggling

I've said it before and I'll say it again - there's no point Ling whinging to the media (as he has done again today) if our performances continue to slide. He's responsible for which players are picked and how they perform - if you find yourself ranting at the players at half time game after game you should perhaps take the hint that something's wrong. I noted immediately when I saw the line-up that it was negative and defensive - and then we went and conceded 2 in the first half. We have shown decent potential in recent matches and I had gained more confidence. But we still don't have the depth in the squad and we're still producing inexplicably poor first halves here and second halves there. We are very fortunate that League Two is as close as it is to still be in a position where we're within touching distance of the play-offs but that won't last forever

I know it's a cliché but aside from bringing Jarvis on and shifting to 4-4-2, or bringing on Thompson (who's still only 18), does Ling have a genuine Plan B? And by that I don't mean start hoofing it up to the big man or going more direct - I mean making actual changes

This is the problem with the lack of depth. It's all well and good saying "well we've got Downes and Saah, and if one of them gets injured we can loan someone or stick MacKenzie in there - we'll be fine". But it's not just about injuries - where's the pressure on them to perform? I know it's not as much of an issue with the centre-backs because they're good, but we lack options. There's no competition in the squad - no chance to rotate or drop someone for a bad performance. Oastler was poor today but what's the alternative? Leadbitter, who made something like only his 2nd or 3rd ever league appearance in his career today - someone who was allegedly brought in as a first-choice right-back but has barely been given a chance in that position. Now we're going into the game against the form side in the league with either him or Mansell there - and Manse hasn't played right-back since Ling took over. If Oastler hadn't been sent off, it's very likely he would've retained his position in the side despite a terrible performance

Having a stable side works fine if you're winning but sticking with the same bunch of players week in week out if you're not winning is stupid

Exactly - just how is Ling to know? ....... Other than spending about twenty hours a week on the training ground with him. Really, if it comes to putting players into the team to see how they fair then we're back in the realms of throwing-in Ashley Keane, Jamie Gosling, Stuart Boardley, Liam Coleman and Mamadou Sow under Leroy, or worse still, the dozens of players that saw us finish bottom of the league in 1996. God help us.

I think that we should be looking at improving the team in every position on the pitch and think that Ling is doing just that. Some signings have been fantastic, some have been a bit mediocre and some have just not worked-out at all - I don't think that his success rate is more than marginally different to most of our reasonably successful managers. I think that there is a difference with him in that the signings of Artemi, Luxton, Baker and Connor Thompson show that he is here for the long-term. Some (and quite possibly all of them) will not make it, but they no doubt have the attributes to give them a chance of making it as professionals.

Today Ling was hamstrung by Oastler's sending-off. That really restricted his his options in the second half. Instead of replacing Easton / Lathrope with Danny Stevens, he had to bring-on Leadbitter.

The bringing-on a young loanee will be at the expense of the development of one ofour young players. Whilst it was great to have a player with the ability of Adam Smith a couple of seasons back, I think that we are ahead of where we were at that stage of our development of the club as a whole.

Bobby Tanz and Geddingtongull, as for your match reports, I couldn't really disagree with any of it, except perhaps for bringing-in loanees. I also thought the referee had a fairly reasonable game.

But if they're not good enough in Ling's eyes to start, then why are they still at the club?

This is the point here - it's all well and good saying "they're not playing presumably because they're not up to it in training", but if it's the case that Ling doesn't want to play them because he doesn't feel they're good enough, why are they in the squad? Surely the squad should only be made up of players who are good enough to play, otherwise you're just wasting money on players who are making up the numbers

It's all well and good putting the emphasis on youth and developing players if you've got the capacity to have a squad of, say, 28-30, giving over 5 or 6 slots to youngsters - you've still got a big enough squad to cope with injuries and form. But if you've got a squad of 24, as we have, and are giving over 6 or 7 slots over to youngsters who you're not expecting to compete for starting berths (i.e. they will only start if absolutely necessary, as with Thompson and MacKenzie - no one expects MacKenzie to fight Downes and Saah for their places), that leaves you with a squad of 17-18. Add in the 2 or 3 injuries we have and we're effectively down to a first team squad of 15 (including Rice, who's purely there in case of emergencies), which gives you no breathing room for poor form or further injuries. It's too small

As for what Ajaxgull said, I don't think the fans do necessarily expect promotion - Torquay fans are an eternally pessimistic bunch on the whole. It's Ling who's the one who came out and said the aim is to get promoted. It is the manager himself who has raised the expectations. He can't blame us (and I know he hasn't) for having too high an expectation if he's the one who said we should be towards the top of the table

That is such an incredibly weak argument that it is laughable. The stages of development for young professional footballers are clearly different from player to player.

Some players come-in as very young players and it can be clearly seen that they are going to quickly establish themselves as first team players and really make an impact at this level (and above) such as Darren Moore, Billy Kee and Jamie Ward.

On the other hand, there are players like Paul Trollope, Lee Barrow, Chris Curran and Muzzy Carayol (who was with us for the best part of two years before he started to show he was far too good for League Two!) who just look out of place on the pitch and become easy targets before they start to establish themselves. They manage to do so over time.

As a club, we are very limited in resources as Ajaxgull points-out. Yesterday we saw a club with not only an attendance about 3 times what we get on average, but a club with much larger income streams such as the bars they have around there, the corporate facilities and the backing of local businesses in a way that we could never have to hope for. One other thing of course that some might have noticed is that yesterday over their tannoy was the discussion that the announcer had with Prof Steve West, who is VC at the University of the West of England. They have a tie-up with Bristol Rovers to develop the new stadium (which is now dependent upon the planning application for a Sainsbury's on the current Memorial Gound). UWE are one of the hugely cash-rich organisations in education that are now utilising those cash reserves for huge capital projects (a bit of a risk if you consider the climate and the capital charges / depreciation etc but still reasonable strategy). With respect to Paignton College, we have nothing like that sort of size organisation to work with.

The reality was that Mike Bateson was happy for us to use public training facilities for ten years - and when we did get the Racecourse it was well below the standards you would expect from a professional football club, show complete ignorance of local business, completely disengage with the local populace, dismantle our youth system and penny-pinched from every moderately successful squad to the extent that when the players that brought that success left, they were not replaced with players anywhere near the ability or potential. Every time we made a push for the play-offs or promotion, the following summer usually saw an exodus of players and then a following season of struggle. That approach saw the careers of Don O'Riordan very badly damaged and Leroy's reputation suffered hugely.

We are now streets ahead of where we were five years ago, but in extremely difficult economic conditions for football. For every pound that this club spends I think it needs to get 'two pounds of value' just to compete with 75% of the other clubs and that is a huge task for everyone at the club - not just Ling but for the commercial function, the youth function, the pitch maintenance and the overall infrastructure. We cannot possibly hope to compete straight-out with the clubs who have the budgets of Bristol Rovers, Oxford, Northampton, Exeter, Bradford, Rotherham, Port Vale etc. Look at their crowds, their facilities and the players that they have on their books. We have to work with 'diamonds in the rough' in the same way that Accrington, Wimbledon, Dagenham and Redbridge and Aldershot do - and we are at a distinct disadvantage because we do not have the links to either the North West or London pool of footballing talent.

To stick with Ling and the club and get behind everything that they are trying to do is essential and does require some pragmatism and some balls. Any of the supporters who get on the back of Billy Bodin because he has a large fee (for our level) on his back and is not really currently producing the football that one might have hoped for is just ridiculous. Judge Billy Bodin in two years time (if he is still here!), like everything else, he is just a small part of a long-term project.