New Striker(s)

how arresting that would be

7 goals in 63 games the last 2 seasons.Hardly prolific.

Leave him alone. He may be geriatric, but he's erudite.

Im sure there will be a flurry of signings Simon but very much doubt they will be of enough quality to get us away from the bottom.
We've been doing it now for years - players in players - out a new messiah announced with interviews on how hes going to change things and add to the team. Hopes raised with each appointment while we slag off the previous crop that didn't impress or make any significant difference.
Na nothing changes except we all get a little lift when a new player arrives with new hope and promise of a change in fortunes only to be deflated a few games later when we actually witness that he is no better than what we released!
Yep were going to see a flurry of them no doubt!

A rookie too save us ok

simonb 


In some ways you may be right Simon, but more accurately I think it will bring home the serious consequences of allowing local politicians motivated only by short term popularity, to be egged on by Hard Left Militants in frustrating and hindering CO's ambitions.

If we take a broader look at ambition for the club, we've been well aware for several years that locals entrepreneurs haven't wanted to touch the loss making business of TUFC with a barge poll. I think it's even a struggle to get many of them up to Plainmoor for a subsidised breakfast. It's looking increasingly likely that Clarke Osborne is concluding that there just isn't the local business talent with sufficient interest in helping out the club to even form a credible local board, although I wish him well with the continuing  search.

If no one locally has the love or ambition to pour their money into loss making Torquay United, then you can see why Clarke Osborne didn't try to kid anyone that he wanted to tip his cash into the hole for us, or even profess any great love of football either, come to that. And that's why attempts to impose TUST approved ambitions upon him will only result in failure for us as supporters and for the club.

Just how long will Clarke's patience last with such a farcical situation ?  As respected local journalist Dave Thomas wrote yesterday 'The new signings will again be backed by Gaming International boss Clarke Osborne, whose £120,000 loan enabled the club to survive in 2016' .

It didn't stop there did it ?. Making the funds available to help keep us in the National League back in 2016 was one thing, but the begging bowl has been kept out. Please make funds available for Kev to make the new signs he wants for the new season. Poor results in the first week and....actually we hate Kev so please make funds available to pay up his contract and get rid of him. Oh, and then make more funds available to pay new salaries for new managerial staff and the compensation payments to acquire them. Next make funds available, because the new man will want different players, and don't forget to keep paying the ones he doesn't want as their contracts can't be ignored. And while you're doing that, we'll all be cancelling our payments to the players fund and slagging you off at every opportunity.

CO's ambition has being controlled by local politicians and the Leftists whispering in their ears. It's going to blow up in their faces if they're not very careful as it's not CO's ambition we're being allowed to benefit from, and I can't see him agreeing to go on like this unless his own ambitions as to the best way forward are allowed to get a look in.

If the Leftist agitators win, then it will all result in tears for TUFC.  The realities speak for themselves. Whether a TUST spokesman is let loose with a microphone at Plainmoor, whether they foolishly display the lack of backing for their plans among the South Devon Community with their 'pre-share issues' the response is the same. Hardly standing room only at the last TUST AGM was it ? The harsh facts have to be accepted, and TUST and it's agreement to 'Promoting the cause of diversity' just oozes adherence to Left wing political slogans to such an extent that it turns off the South Devon public as well as many ordinary supporters who would otherwise quite readily give their support to a Fans organisation that didn't make them feel as if they were compulsorily getting aligned to certain social or political doctrines.

It will be important to continue keeping a close eye on TUST. It may well be that in the coming year it holds more meetings within the vicinity of Away games in order to cater to its London Left paymasters than it does for Devon based fans who just don't want the mix of football and Left Wing politics that so enthuses London and Home Counties militants. Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing. TUST will undoubtedly attempt to benefit from attempts to more closely align itself with the Official Supporters Club over the coming months. Don't be fooled, continue to see it for what it is, and keep on demanding that we don't don't want their politics mixed up with our football club.

Even for those still unable to make up their minds what Clarke Osborne's ambitions are, they can surely easily figure out what his ambitions are not.  They were not to come here and be straithjacketed by backward looking councillors or to dance to the TUST's tune. Push him too far by keeping up the current impasse and we'll all suffer. How long could TUST keep the show on the road for while also paying back the loans, at whatever low level of football they attempted to have the club playing at, if Clarke dumped TUFC in their lap in the future ?  Or what realistic hope for their phoenix club the Red Star Gulls ??   The funds from a Communist cake stall in London won't get that off the ground either.

The sensible course is clear. Let's help rather than hinder our Owners attempts to build the club and make it fit for the future, and importantly, with the revenue streams it needs. Consider the Socialist wreckage we'll be left with should we allow political activists with a passing interest in football, such as those who run Supporters Direct to prevail, and to install their regional puppets. Keep stalling, keep hindering, and the failure to get on board with the bright and hopeful ambitions set out before us, will consign us to a bleak future. We really must force the Militants and their political friends to take the handbrake off ambition in 2018, or I fear our chance will be gone.

Trump Militant and former Roberts admirer AJ speaks of Osborne’s ambitions as if replication of what happened in Bristol and Reading would somehow benefit us rather than killing us off. AJ’s persistence with this line where all available evidence appears to the contrary is admirable, albeit slightly mad seeming.

Good to have you back and as militant as ever in 2018, AJ. Many of us were waiting patiently for you to blow Clarke’s trumpet again. Congratulations in showing a bit more restraint than Thomas before shooting your New Year bolt. Well done for sneaking in reference to ‘the loans’, but your denouncing of the local business community was probably a bit too college leftie for most of us on here.