Dover v Torquay Utd. SAT 7TH APRIL. ko.3PM

[nickbrod]

These facts about the playing budget, the business plan having to be agreed by the National League should confirm Owers' problems in recruitment. The team's plight cannot be laid entirely at his door and is why he's been given the tools to build a proper squad for next season, increasingly likely to be National South.
It could be worse as Chester's outgoing manager, Marcus Bignot, predicts the club is heading for another relegation battle next season unless the club's structure changes for the better.

[arcadia]

Chris; you've got to play with your brain in gear. When you're on a booking (whatever you think about it) and the ref (however bad he might be) warns you that you've used up your tally of fouls, you don't go and foul with the very next challenge do you? That's just idiotic.

Romain was trying to 'do' Galifuocco and whilst I don't blame him he should have eaten his revenge meal cold and left it for another match in the future. Even better get someone else to get him next week or asap ~ it happens; it happened to that little shit Chaney when Tranmere sorted him out for some cowardly nonsense he got involved in the previous season with one of our own players. The gobby little turd hasn't been seen around Plainmoor since now he hasn't got Nicholson to change his nappy for him has he.

When your a professional footballer you are totally committed and can't think shall I go in or not you get injured and Romaine went in, it was very harsh that decision and Heally's sending off was a joke and your opinions are a bit toward the referee. I think you might support them in the back of your mind as I think you might have been one. The referee did not know what he was doing when he gave the drop ball after the keeper wasted the time pretending to be injured why did he not book the keeper.
As for Chaney in a better side than he played in he would be a better player your words are a little harsh.

[merse btpir]

When your a professional footballer you are totally committed and can't think shall I go in or not you get injured and Romaine went in, it was very harsh that decision and Heally's sending off was a joke and your opinions are a bit toward the referee. I think you might support them in the back of your mind as I think you might have been one. The referee did not know what he was doing when he gave the drop ball after the keeper wasted the time pretending to be injured why did he not book the keeper.
As for Chaney in a better side than he played in he would be a better player your words are a little harsh.

Look on the BTPIR site tonight and there is an alternative view from a Dover fan Chris; I put it up for information not as a definitve account nor as the authentic description of what was going on.

As for Chaney; he got sorted out for a shameful act of cowardice he perpetrated on a senior fellow pro at Plainmoor in the previous season and hasn't been seen around the club since ~ good!

I'm not prepared to discuss it in public but still hold the evidence of that as it was sent to me; Chaney and another who was involved are now both history at Plainmoor and rightly so!

Nicholson was made aware of the misconduct of that and involving several other of the players and declined to act on it. Very soon afterwards he was gone too; it wasn't over that but it was poetic justice in a way.

[arcadia]

Look on the BTPIR site tonight and there is an alternative view from a Dover fan Chris; I put it up for information not as a definitve account nor as the authentic description of what was going on.

As for Chaney; he got sorted out for a shameful act of cowardice he perpetrated on a senior fellow pro at Plainmoor in the previous season and hasn't been seen around the club since ~ good!

I'm not prepared to discuss it in public but still hold the evidence of that as it was sent to me; Chaney and another who was involved are now both history at Plainmoor and rightly so!

Nicholson was made aware of the misconduct of that and involving several other of the players and declined to act on it. Very soon afterwards he was gone too; it wasn't over that but it was poetic justice in a way.

I was unaware about Chaney I cannot comment but the referee yesterday made decisions that were very poor and you could say a homer. The Heally incident was right in front of us.

[MellowYellow]

That's absolutely it; check out the appearance records of Kuklowski, Clarke, Gowling, Pittman and Gosling in the previous season and you've hit the nail on the head. They are on contracts that still need to be paid and between them they've only been available and/or selected for a fanny full of games anyway. Many of the early loan players that came in were being paid by their parent clubs. It wasn't until Anderson was paid off that money was freed up to take on Romain's wages from Dagenham and there were funds to bring in Williams.

The club had to stay within the approved business plan agreed with the league at the beginning of the season and it is 90% of that which was gone by the time Nicholson had been got rid of.

To get beyond that business plan the club then has to re-submit to the league showing increased capital coming in and it then has to be ratified by the league and approved or denied. This takes time and is more than likely why no significant capital expenditure over and beyond the remaining ten per cent on incoming players was seen being used until Williams and Romain arrived.

It's been a mess; totally created by having an L plate manager overseen by an L plated general manager and with no on the spot boardroom supervision with the ultimate financial decisions being made remotely.

I know Owers has to report directly to Osborne on a weekly basis; whether Nicholson did I am not party to; but suspect it was all done through Harrop. It's been a total cock-up and inevitably has led to a third successive relegation struggle and one which is going to be lost this time by the look of things. A struggle which in the context of what went before in the previous two seasons should never really have happened for financial reasons, but as ever at the foot of a table you find clubs in disarray ~ Chester, with their decison to go full time with their inability to execute a business plan to support that; Guiseley, with their ill thought out decision to go full-time and alienating their existing part-time players during the vital first third of the season. Woking, with their same over reliance on young development loanees as at TQ1 and Maidstone again morphing into a full-time club and upsetting the part-time apple cart during a season when these major policy changes should be carried out in the close season.

When they get it together, you will see any of these sides more than hold their own with any club in the league but it is the tell tale signs of chaos off the field that does for them and we have been that before and ever since Harrop walked through the door!

on the wider picture.

[Gulliball]

It does get very tiresome when every matchday thread, and pretty much every other one as well, ends up going exactly the same way, despite nothing having changed regarding Kevin Nicholson since August last year.

The blame for the current mess and mix of players lies with those who run the club. They did not want Nicholson as manager but didn’t have the courage to sack a popular manager last April after a great escape. So he was allowed to build a squad over the summer with his vision, including some players on two year contracts, and then sacked three weeks into the season, leaving his replacement to work with a squad someone else assembled and the initial budget spent.

Whatever your opinion of Nicholson though, his involvement ended last August and that’s the last moment he could affect anything. Everything since then is with a new manager, and no matter what happens will just be confirmation bias of your existing opinion.

It’s a common post on here that our current position is because of the players signed last summer by Nicholson. What would have happened though if Gary Owers had come in and overseen an increase in form? That would be proof that Nicholson had assembled a good side, right? Or proof that Owers is a better manager than Nicholson? If we get relegated that will be proof that Nicholson should have been left in charge, or proof that the squad he left was rubbish?

The reality is that this group of players would have been totally different under the manager that signed them. That’s not changed since August, but we’ve ended up with a very boring situation that if you weren’t a fan of Nicholson then every bad result under the new management needs to be explained away. People that were fans of Nicholson are then drawn in, with the only result that the worse Owers does, the more Nicholson is discussed. We’re at the point now that it is so entrenched that it will just be repeated ad-infinitum. I can’t wait for next season when Gary Owers producing a good squad will be proof of what he could have done with his own players this season if only if it wasn’t for Nicholson signing Yan Klukowski.

For what it’s worth, I liked Nicholson as manager, as I felt he held the club together during a very difficult time. Our biggest battles during that time were off the field and he was a popular figurehead that helped keep the club united - fans donating to the player fund, huge increase in season ticket sales, community projects etc. On the field we had no money, which meant losing a lot of games, and it was his first job so he had to learn as he went, but he did an excellent job to turn things around and keep us up in 2015/16, and then kept us up again in 2016/17 with his own squad.

I thought sacking him when we did was crazy. We’d picked up 1 point in 4 games, against the sides currently sat 3rd, 4th, 5th and 14th in the league, so a draw and three defeats is probably not far below what you'd expect on paper. To have let Nicholson build his own squad and then sacking him after 4 games was stupid, but despite taking that action we were in no way prepared and spent a further six games with a caretaker before the new manager came in.

It’s think it’s fair to say that Owers has been totally underwhelming to date. He’s faced many of the same issues that Nicholson faced, and our biggest battle is still off the pitch, but we’re still losing a lot of games, we’re still conceding far more than we score, we’re still conceding late goals, we’re still conceding a crazy amount of penalties, we’re still having a huge turnover of players, the success of signings is still hit and miss…

I don’t see why signing loanees is a sign of poor planning – it is the way football is going with the biggest and richest clubs stockpiling talented young players, and when you don’t have money it is a way to add quality that could otherwise not be afforded. The Hereford promotion winning squad of 2007/08 is perhaps a very good example of how loaned players can be used to great success, and since then the rich have got richer and the poor only poorer. Our trouble this season has been that players like Romain arrived too late, whilst the first wave of Owers signings (Murphy, McQuoid, Myrie-Williams) flopped. That is just the nature of signings for clubs in our position though – there will be some defect and the success rate will be hit and miss. It won’t change until we can beat other clubs to players that are in demand, which means an injection of finance or getting relegated low enough that we’re one of the richer clubs. There’s nothing inherently wrong in Nicholson (or Owers) relying on loan signings, non-contracts, trialists and freebees, given the position they’re working from.

I think that sort of summarizes much of my own disappointment. If we had replaced Nicholson with a more successful manager, then it would have proven to be a good decision. Every manager has a shelf-life, and when you’re losing games you’re going to come in for criticism, so replacing Nicholson could have been a fresh start. Yet for every area that Nicholson was supposedly weak in, Owers hasn’t been able to improve any of it, which if Nicholson was failing so badly should have been achievable.

We’ve replaced a young and potentially promising manager that cared about the club and was forging links with the fanbase, community, ladies team etc with a yes-man for those running the club, at a time when great scrutiny of their actions and motives is required. And for what? A lower win % as manager and not pulling off a great escape.

If Nicholson’s position was untenable with his record and 1 point from 4 games then where is Owers now? He got 2 points from the 4 reverse fixtures that Nicholson managed, went 9 without a win during our worst run, crashed out of both cups at the first hurdle, and hasn’t been able to turn the club around.

I don’t doubt that it’s a hard job, that there’s restrictions, and he’s inherited players that don’t match his plans – but all of this was known when he took the job. You don’t take over a club in the relegation zone because everything is rosy, and he didn’t take over as manager to get us promoted next season when he can have entirely his own players. He knew the circumstances, knew the squad he was taking over, knew the budget and he left another job to take this one.

He inherited a squad with some good players and has been backed to sign 22 of his own players to improve the other spots in the team. He’s had 36 of the 46 games to rise up the league and publicly backed himself to do it. It’s now six months since he declared we’re not rubbish any more, and then we were told we’d be out of danger before Christmas – and the simple fact is that he hasn’t improved us. We are still rubbish, we’re still not safe come April, and could very well be relegated by the weekend.

[goody2449]

The best balanced post I’ve read on here for a long time

[LankyGull]

Brilliant post Gulliball, a very good read. Completely agree on all the points you made.

[Jack]

Thank you Gulliball for a carefully constructed summary of recent events. I expect that most readers of this forum will share the same thoughts.

[Arrywithnobrain]

It does get very tiresome when every matchday thread, and pretty much every other one as well, ends up going exactly the same way, despite nothing having changed regarding Kevin Nicholson since August last year.

The blame for the current mess and mix of players lies with those who run the club. They did not want Nicholson as manager but didn’t have the courage to sack a popular manager last April after a great escape. So he was allowed to build a squad over the summer with his vision, including some players on two year contracts, and then sacked three weeks into the season, leaving his replacement to work with a squad someone else assembled and the initial budget spent.

Whatever your opinion of Nicholson though, his involvement ended last August and that’s the last moment he could affect anything. Everything since then is with a new manager, and no matter what happens will just be confirmation bias of your existing opinion.

It’s a common post on here that our current position is because of the players signed last summer by Nicholson. What would have happened though if Gary Owers had come in and overseen an increase in form? That would be proof that Nicholson had assembled a good side, right? Or proof that Owers is a better manager than Nicholson? If we get relegated that will be proof that Nicholson should have been left in charge, or proof that the squad he left was rubbish?

The reality is that this group of players would have been totally different under the manager that signed them. That’s not changed since August, but we’ve ended up with a very boring situation that if you weren’t a fan of Nicholson then every bad result under the new management needs to be explained away. People that were fans of Nicholson are then drawn in, with the only result that the worse Owers does, the more Nicholson is discussed. We’re at the point now that it is so entrenched that it will just be repeated ad-infinitum. I can’t wait for next season when Gary Owers producing a good squad will be proof of what he could have done with his own players this season if only if it wasn’t for Nicholson signing Yan Klukowski.

For what it’s worth, I liked Nicholson as manager, as I felt he held the club together during a very difficult time. Our biggest battles during that time were off the field and he was a popular figurehead that helped keep the club united - fans donating to the player fund, huge increase in season ticket sales, community projects etc. On the field we had no money, which meant losing a lot of games, and it was his first job so he had to learn as he went, but he did an excellent job to turn things around and keep us up in 2015/16, and then kept us up again in 2016/17 with his own squad.

I thought sacking him when we did was crazy. We’d picked up 1 point in 4 games, against the sides currently sat 3rd, 4th, 5th and 14th in the league, so a draw and three defeats is probably not far below what you'd expect on paper. To have let Nicholson build his own squad and then sacking him after 4 games was stupid, but despite taking that action we were in no way prepared and spent a further six games with a caretaker before the new manager came in.

It’s think it’s fair to say that Owers has been totally underwhelming to date. He’s faced many of the same issues that Nicholson faced, and our biggest battle is still off the pitch, but we’re still losing a lot of games, we’re still conceding far more than we score, we’re still conceding late goals, we’re still conceding a crazy amount of penalties, we’re still having a huge turnover of players, the success of signings is still hit and miss…

I don’t see why signing loanees is a sign of poor planning – it is the way football is going with the biggest and richest clubs stockpiling talented young players, and when you don’t have money it is a way to add quality that could otherwise not be afforded. The Hereford promotion winning squad of 2007/08 is perhaps a very good example of how loaned players can be used to great success, and since then the rich have got richer and the poor only poorer. Our trouble this season has been that players like Romain arrived too late, whilst the first wave of Owers signings (Murphy, McQuoid, Myrie-Williams) flopped. That is just the nature of signings for clubs in our position though – there will be some defect and the success rate will be hit and miss. It won’t change until we can beat other clubs to players that are in demand, which means an injection of finance or getting relegated low enough that we’re one of the richer clubs. There’s nothing inherently wrong in Nicholson (or Owers) relying on loan signings, non-contracts, trialists and freebees, given the position they’re working from.

I think that sort of summarizes much of my own disappointment. If we had replaced Nicholson with a more successful manager, then it would have proven to be a good decision. Every manager has a shelf-life, and when you’re losing games you’re going to come in for criticism, so replacing Nicholson could have been a fresh start. Yet for every area that Nicholson was supposedly weak in, Owers hasn’t been able to improve any of it, which if Nicholson was failing so badly should have been achievable.

We’ve replaced a young and potentially promising manager that cared about the club and was forging links with the fanbase, community, ladies team etc with a yes-man for those running the club, at a time when great scrutiny of their actions and motives is required. And for what? A lower win % as manager and not pulling off a great escape.

If Nicholson’s position was untenable with his record and 1 point from 4 games then where is Owers now? He got 2 points from the 4 reverse fixtures that Nicholson managed, went 9 without a win during our worst run, crashed out of both cups at the first hurdle, and hasn’t been able to turn the club around.

I don’t doubt that it’s a hard job, that there’s restrictions, and he’s inherited players that don’t match his plans – but all of this was known when he took the job. You don’t take over a club in the relegation zone because everything is rosy, and he didn’t take over as manager to get us promoted next season when he can have entirely his own players. He knew the circumstances, knew the squad he was taking over, knew the budget and he left another job to take this one.

He inherited a squad with some good players and has been backed to sign 22 of his own players to improve the other spots in the team. He’s had 36 of the 46 games to rise up the league and publicly backed himself to do it. It’s now six months since he declared we’re not rubbish any more, and then we were told we’d be out of danger before Christmas – and the simple fact is that he hasn’t improved us. We are still rubbish, we’re still not safe come April, and could very well be relegated by the weekend.

Very good and balanced critique: will Merse agree??????

[SkyBlueGull]

Gulliball

Best post for a very very long time and I almost wish this was an epitath to the whole Nicholson saga and we could move on.

I would add one comment and that it is difficult in comparing Nicholson and Owers because they weren't on the same playing field

As an example I haven't seen Owers have to drive players on a team bus to away games and whilst it has been used to take the pi55 out of Nicholson it was a disgrace that the board let this happen. So by that I mean Nicholson was having to do things - distracting him from just managing which is all Owers has to do.

[merse btpir]

That is a very good post by Gulliball; indeed the very best I can recall reading on here and presents his summing up of the situation very well.......

THAT is what a forum is for; not complaining every time an alternative view to your own is put, and pretending it is some sort of cheer leading exercise that the players will read and gain inspiration from before they play a game.

'The blame for the current mess and mix of players lies with those who run the club. They did not want Nicholson as manager but didn’t have the courage to sack a popular manager last April after a great escape. So he was allowed to build a squad over the summer with his vision, including some players on two year contracts, and then sacked three weeks into the season, leaving his replacement to work with a squad someone else assembled and the initial budget spent.'

That's entirely true and I would love to know the true reason they held off replacing him when they should have; surely it wasn't because it was felt that by doing so the fan base would have been upset was it?

Of course the club has ended up with a group of players totally different under the manager that signed the original lot; that is very nearly always the nature of the beast and it has had to be because of the unsuitability of the players recruited by the previous manager. A young and potentially promising manager that cared about the club and was forging links with the fan base, community, ladies team etc has been replaced with a manager more in line with the expectations of those running the club ~ of course that is the situation; would you expect anything different?

The priority for the manager was not what Nicholson was giving time to; THAT is the role now being filled by the trust, the official supporters club and using the injection of capital procured from the Premier League to create a hub and community project. A manager needs to be left to manage the team and manage the whole playing side of the club. He is not supposed to be a fan and it is better he is not a fan and takes a more detached, professional and objective view of things ....and he is certainly not supposed to be driving the team around in a minibus!

Sacking Nicholson when Harrop did was crazy; it should have been done at the end of his previous season as Chester will be doing with Marcus Bignot and starting again with a new man with his own squad prepared and coached to his own standards........it wasn't that difficult to comprehend was it?

[brucie]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Its clear that Osborne didn't like/rate Nicholson as he was refused funds to strengthen the squad towards the end of last season when we were in the mire. At the time that was taken to indicate that Osborne had zero interest in the football side but now it seems more likely that he didn't rate the manager.

However Nicholson adopted a siege mentality and somehow kept us up against all the odds. In my view Osborne would have been even more unpopular had he sacked Nicholson in the close season so probably (reluctantly) kept him on.

Unfortunately having saved us twice it appears Nicho started believing his own hype which is clear by the way he acted when he got the sack. I don't think for a minute that the owner intended to sack him after four games.

Its all very well saying sacking him after four games was ridiculous but having had the misfortune to witness the Boreham Wood game we would probably have been relegated by November if he had stayed in charge.

As merse quite rightly says we should be able to compete with most teams in this league but it has been an unmitigated shambles of a season.

[merse btpir]

Its all very well saying sacking him after four games was ridiculous but having had the misfortune to witness the Boreham Wood game we would probably have been relegated by November if he had stayed in charge.

That being the only Plainmoor game I have attended in years meant that I was able to witness for myself the ludicrous sycophancy the guy received from many in Bristows Bench after a game in which his team was clearly second best to an opposition far fitter, quicker thinking and tactically set up and organised to have made such a mess of his last chance of hanging on to his job.

Boreham Wood could (and should) have doubled their score that night and in any case got four!

[Gulliball]

A young and potentially promising manager that cared about the club and was forging links with the fan base, community, ladies team etc has been replaced with a manager more in line with the expectations of those running the club ~ of course that is the situation; would you expect anything different?

The priority for the manager was not what Nicholson was giving time to; THAT is the role now being filled by the trust, the official supporters club and using the injection of capital procured from the Premier League to create a hub and community project. A manager needs to be left to manage the team and manage the whole playing side of the club. He is not supposed to be a fan and it is better he is not a fan and takes a more detached, professional and objective view of things ....and he is certainly not supposed to be driving the team around in a minibus!

This is something that the club (and the trust) should be doing, but you can’t replace the presence of the first team squad and manager to give that connection with the community. This is the one card the club has to play when trying to attract fans, specifically the younger generations. You may be able to watch a Manchester City or Manchester United game on the television, but Wayne Rooney is never going to go into your school and teach a lesson.

From my own childhood, I remember being part of the Frank Prince school trips on a matchday and going around getting autographs from the players in the dressing room (Wayne Thomas was hilarious). Then being part of the supporter’s club and getting a birthday card from your favourite player – these are the things that TUFC can offer that Premiership clubs can’t and are the key to building the next generation of loyal supporters rather than a superficial rise in attendances when times are good.

From listening to interviews with Nicholson where he described himself as “the public face of the club” that was something that he understood and took responsibility for. There was a first team player rotating at TULFC, there was a player at the youth sessions and quite often he was there himself representing the club at all manner of local events. He connected with those outside of the core support of the club more than any other manager we’ve had.

He also communicated directly with the fans, which gave a sense of connection between the club and fans. During that first season there was a sense that fans could help the club and make a difference, which you saw reflected in the player’s fund and season ticket sales that summer. Even the now mocked tyre flip challenge kept that going during the summer, and I don’t think it was a co-incidence that we got record season ticket sales during that feel-good period, with Nicholson and and MacDonald in the club shop as manager and captain selling them personally.

What we have now is press releases from Clark Osborne and nothing else. There’s no unity, no feel-good factor, no connection with supporters. This summer will be the first time trying to sell season tickets without a great escape to build on, and I think it’s then that you’ll see a tangible reflection of the difference Kevin Nicholson made to the club off the pitch. Based on what I see inside Plainmoor I am sure we publish attendances, as many clubs do, based on ‘tickets sold’ rather than fans inside the ground. Once you remove the healthy season ticket sales and you have to convince those people to turn up each week/midweek for regional football, there’s the chance we’ll see a huge drop-off next season.

Now, I fully understand that this is not his primary job, and every manger will be judged on results on the pitch. But given the circumstances the club was in, he was meeting the targets on the pitch, even if those are now lower than we’ve previously been throughout history. Until things are resolved behind the scenes, this isn’t going to be a Golden Era that’s remembered fondly for what we do on the pitch - no matter who the manager is, we’re not going to be a Football League club and we’re not going to compete at the top end of the division. Given that, building up the community spirit and future generations of support whilst meeting the targets and learning as a manager was no bad thing in my opinion.

Certainly with hindsight, we’ve sacked a manager that fitted into the club and brought a lot off the field to appoint one that doesn’t, without any improvement on the pitch to justify the change. I felt at the time that the problem at the club isn't who is managing it - Nicholson had to rely on players not wanted elsewhere, non-contracts, loan signings, freebees, and Owers has faced the same. At best he is going to match Nicholson's record, and in all likelihood he will come up short and we'll be relegated. I don't see what Owers offers that is more in line with the club's expectations than Nicholson offered. In all honesty, for the money it took to pay Nicholson off, pay Herrera off, compensate Bath for Owers, appoint Kuhl etc, we would have been better off using the money to add a striker back in September. This is money that has been lent to the club and will need to be repaid at some stage - will Osborne fund that himself or will the next owner/fans have to take on the debt?