FL2: Torquay v Gillingham 22 January 2011

That’s more like it. I’m more than happy to debate the merits of Paul Buckle if it doesn’t just come across as you whinging.

Also, I agree with you to a certain extent regarding using 4-4-2 at home (although 4-5-1 has its place). I also agree that he is trying to get Zebs to do 2 jobs, but to be fair Zebs is good at both.

There has been a lot of debate about the formation, particularly at home. Away from home the 4-5-1 formation has worked well in all the games that I have seen and was effective at the Morecambe game by all accounts, the 2 penalties can hardly be attributed to the formation just rank poor defending. At home it’s a bit different, but I could see why he wanted to use the same formation because it was successful away from home.

I’m not sure the last 20 minutes at Oxford is a good example, yes we battered them but they had sat right back and we threw caution to the wind, we were almost playing 4 up front at one stage. But I do agree we need to have another look at 4-4-2 with Kee and Benyon up front and O’kane and Zebs out wide. There was an opportunity to try that out yesterday. After an hour I would have taken Stevens off, put Kee on and tried it out for the last 30 minutes. That’s the trouble, a lot of people want to see this but it hasn’t really been used much so far, so no guarantees this is definitely going to work. How many times and for how long as this been used so far this season? I personally think when we do go 4-4-2 it should be with Zebs up with Benyon and Stevens on the wing, if that doesn’t work then try with Kee up top and Zebs dropping back to the wing. Another reason I say this is that Zebs did a good job in the first half yesterday winning headers and flicking it on to Benyon. He played the role similar to that of Rendell that Chris Hayes rightly says works well.

As I said in my original post Bucks makes mistakes, but not enough credit is given to the good things he has done. Notwithstanding our promotion and Wembley appearances he has done fantastically well bringing players on. Look at the likes of Benyon, Ellis,Okane, all 3 cost nothing, were young raw talents who were in and out of the team initially but now they form the mainstay of the team and all look like they will move on to bigger and better things soon, and for a fee.

Also I bumped into Barton Downs in Exeter today who came up with another very good point, as usual. (Sorry to disturb your lunch Nick, but I enjoyed the chat). He mentioned that Bucks has a very good cup record and good cup runs bring in money. I believe it is 1 FA Trophy final and an FA Cup record (regarding wins) that is only better by half a dozen clubs in the league. We have won more FA Cup ties this season than Exeter have over the last 5 years. He could also take us further in this year’s FA Cup than we have ever been before. I would imagine that his FA Cup record is better than any previous Torquay manager, but I stand to be corrected.

Yes he does make mistakes and I’m not sure he is totally convinced of the team line up and formation for home games, however I wouldn’t want to swap him for any other lower league manager right now. If you can convince me that he is bad for the club and you think there is someone who could do a better job right now then I’m all ears, until then why not get behind him and stop using anything you can to beat the club or him with.

couldnt make it to the game yesterday due to work commitments but curious about how effective (or not ) akinfenwa was can anyone enlighten me please