Scouting staff?

Dave Hedges I believe is the club's scout - obviously not on the look for a Ryan Brunt type player.

Gawd help us, Taylor made such a good job last time.

Where's Harrop?

Funny how differently people can read things.

The Gary Owers Fan Club (or should I say the very thinly disguised "Obsessed with Kevin Nicholson Club") sees this reshuffle as a strengthening of Owers' position.

I am not so sure.

I can see so many parallels between the Owers / Kuhl regime and the Knill / Brass regime.

Brass could not wait to get away and when he did Knill was not allowed to bring in an assistant to replace him - because Knill had not convinced that he was the man for the job. Sacking him was cheaper with one payoff than two.

Kuhl could not wait to get away and when he did ......

So no chance for Owers to bring in another Owers man. Clarke Osborne's close friend Dave Hedges gets a proper job. Taylor slots into a gap.

Of course Taylor has played a central part in Torquay's recent troubles.

I can remember being really impressed when Ling was allowed to bring in a man of Taylor's calibre as his no 2. Having played together at Swindon, they had a common shared football schooling and were a natural management team. Taylor had only just been pipped to the post for the Exeter manager's job by Paul Tisdale.

You would have expected such an experienced no. 2 to slot comfortably into a caretaker role while his boss recovered from illness. If he had, how differently might things have turned out for Torquay United and for Martin Ling.

Had Ling's team ticked over under Taylor, Ling could have eased his way back in. You could even have had a reshuffle to take some strain off Ling - Ling director of football, Taylor head coach. But as things were, Ling's team had to be handed over to an outsider and - much as some moan about it - it is impossible to see how Ling could ever return in the circumstances.

If Owers does go the same way as Knill, let's hope Geoff Harrop has learned something from his disastrous indecision of last season and lines up a replacement before firing the bullet. I am sure Taylor does not want another lengthy stint as caretaker manager.

Interesting post Jon, very informative. I'm just wondering about the point I have copied above. Everybody has lambasted Harrop over the delayed appointment of a new manager after the Nicholson sacking, but the way I understood the situation was that Harrop had made a choice and Osbourne overruled it, possibly on cost grounds. Owers was Osbourne's choice. How Owers came to Osbourne's attention I have no idea, but I doubt Osbourne is as ignorant of football as he claims, wasn't his father a board member of Bristol Rovers when Clarke was a child?

Agreed his period in the caretaker role was dreadful, but with him as assistant when Ling was around, we were a million miles better than what we are today. Hopefully he won’t have to become caretaker this time, but if he does, it would likely be under much different circumstances and certainly with a point to prove at a much lower level. As we currently are.

Personally, I’m happy with this appointment as unlike his boss, he has been part of a successful managerial duo before. Not deliriously so, but it doesn’t strike me as anything too much to grumble about. It’s a ‘Welcome back to first team duties, Shaun Taylor” from me.