Torquay United Fans Forum

The fact is Baygull you made the statement about them having an ounce of business knowledge not me. I just used your calculations. Mmmmmmm....... like most on here i would expect, no business acumen but a whole lot of advice. After the event in most cases as well.

Neal wrote:
BayGull - I agree most of the sentiment of your post but I have to make a comment about your comment "it seems no board member with an ounce of business knowledge either judging by the decisions they have made ". Well if they don't have an ounce of business knowledge how comes they run successful business. Now, if you have 2 ounces of business knowledge then you should be more successful than they are. So why havnt you approached them with the view of taking over the club?

So you are saying that because two of them run successful businesses and each have an ounce ( at least) of business knowledge .. 1 ounce + 1 ounce = 2 ounces?
In that case they should never have made the pig's ear of things like they have done should they!

In answer to your question - I don't profess to have even an ounce of business knowledge so would be even more useless than they are proving to be, as you say they both have at least an ounce each!

A couple of comments.

Eddy - of course they will have made some mistakes, they would probably agree with you if you asked them, BUT... I make mistakes, my friends and family makes mistakes, my bosses make mistakes, perhaps you don't, well, well done, you are obviously quite exceptional. Football is a competitive sport, 50% will finish top half and 50% wont, I would guess if you analyzed every single message board of all the clubs you would probably find that 50% of Football club boards / chairman are viewed as useless by fans and message boards. Of course its your right to keep hammering this down their throats that they are useless, and ours, But do you think you are really helping the situation, or just voicing your frustration.

BayGull - I agree most of the sentiment of your post but I have to make a comment about your comment "it seems no board member with an ounce of business knowledge either judging by the decisions they have made ". Well if they don't have an ounce of business knowledge how comes they run successful business. Now, if you have 2 ounces of business knowledge then you should be more successful than they are. So why havnt you approached them with the view of taking over the club?

I think the board have the interests of the club at heart, why the hell would you take it over if you didn't. They are successful local business people who are not millionaires. yes they have little knowledge of running a football club, but who the hell does. MB said many times in the early days of message boards when he also posted that running a football club was nothing like a real business. gee and did he get slagged off at the time as well by the way. So they will learn, yes by their mistakes, BUT I fully believe they do have the best interest of the LONG TERM future of this club, and we should do all we can to support them.

Good post Baygull. The rot has been here for some time. Out of all that have happened this season the one thing that I still cannot come to terms with is the appointment of Nicholson as a man who "ticked all the right boxes". In appointing Nicholson, this Board hammered the final nail into the Gulls' coffin, previous nails having been inserted by the previous board. I see this as up there with a long list of idiotic decisions made by the club, going back many years. I still find it quite incredible.

Let's face it - the current board have really just delayed the inevitable by a season!

The club have been on the edge of calamity a few times before, but there always seems to have been a white knight in one form or another who has managed to provide a lifeline so we live to fight another day.
After the Roberts fiasco there was a new consortium that was going to save us with the help of Richardson, then came a lottery millionaire (everyone's dream!), then came a consortium and another consortium made up of fans with just the club's well being at heart.
Finally this leaves us where we are today .. staring the relegation trap-door right in the face for sure, no money, no board member with an ounce of footballing knowledge, it seems no board member with an ounce of business knowledge either judging by the decisions they have made - and finally a manager who is so out of his depth now he will soon be sunk without trace in the lower league abyss!

It matters not how well the fans sing at each game now - the players in the squad do not have the grit, determination or will to survive anymore - that has been displayed by the 'rats leaving the sinking ship' over the past weeks.

We, as fans, have to decide whether we want to continue kidding ourselves that we are going to win every game until the end of the season! It's daft saying we only need to win x number of games to survive, that is dependent on what the other clubs above us do, are we relying on them to also lose x number of games to make us safe?
The board had the choice to appoint a skilled and qualified manager from the list of applicants Mr Breed said had applied - there had to be more than just Nicholson who ticked all the correct boxes and was cheap .. they all knew what funds were available when they applied for the job.

Next season will surely see many part-timers involved at the club, there will not be the funds to support a squad of full-time players.
And will the current board still be in place? They must be ruing the day they were cajoled (by D Edwards) to step in and take over a club that was already reeling on the ropes from the battering given to it by the past board!
All this seems so far away from the days when Roberts was out in the Gulf with his wife attending football conferences, living the high life on the club credit card and planning his super new stadium courtesy of Torquay Tics!!

Torquay United will survive by name - but those who keep saying we are a 'big' club and should easily be above the likes of Dover, Eastleigh and Boreham Wood etc, need to face reality. The club is a shambles and will need to have one hell of a shake-up both on and off the field before it regains anything like the respect it has enjoyed over the past years with proper business minded chairmen like Pope & Bateson at the helm, helped by managers like O'Farrell, Knowles, Warnock, McFarland, Rosenior and Atkins.

Maybe one day those days will return - but who will be alive to see them?

The board are doing a great job under difficult circumstances, the only poor decision viewed at the moment is the manager's appointment. Many managers are employed and struggle at certain clubs, under certain conditions, they can be successful elsewhere, currently Kevin is struggling to gain the results, although appointing the right manager is important, the two things are separate, they could have spent all their budget on an experienced manager and be in the same place?

My opinion is if your given a job you need to do it, to the best of your ability, ultimately there is always someone more experienced or better prepared for the situation than you, that is the challenge of being successful.

Kevin needs to get on with the job and try to improve things, on hindsight a decision will be made at some point if he's now the right man for the job, this is how it works in football. We all have our opinions, but take into consideration the guys in the firing line are all nice people who have family and children, so it's not great slagging them off all the time.

Open debates, opinions and observations are fine!

They've paid in the main for poor decision after poor decision by the previous regime. Don't underestimate the mess we were in when they took over. They've continually had to find the money to keep the club going, it is far from as simple as Eddy is trying to make out.

Neal- your support for the board is admirable. Out of interest, do you actually deny that since bravely stepping forward to take the club on, they have made a series of poor decisions that have ultimately done it further harm?

Fantasia wrote:Some attributes the board has:

The willingness to risk losing hard-earned money.
The confidence to take decisions to stop the club haemorrhaging money.
Increasingly thick skins ( I guess ) to be able to cope with abuse.
A love of the club.

Since no-one with any better credentials was prepared to do anything 7 months ago, that is what we have.

Well said and precisely!

Its not as if there is a queue of wealthy individuals with loads of football knowledge just dying to take over Torquay Utd. Some people on here just can't handle the harsh reality. If there is any I'm sure the board would be quite willing and probably relieved to let them have it. The moaners on here would still find something wrong even then.

Personally, I would re-wind to the Exeter v Torquay match on sky sports, when ling " fell ill" before the match, albeit we won 1-0, but nothing has quite been right since then.

Tend to agree, I said at the beginning we did not have time to restructure a team and had to get the best out of what we had, add a couple of effective players in positions to suit a robust system with the teams strengths in mind. I still think Kevin was too over confident to think he could play, coach, manage and run his own PR with just Robbie helping him, both of them are great guys and I still wish them well, but "insanity is continuing to do things the same way, expecting the outcome to be different".

eddyh wrote:Whilst I would agree that it's too late to sack him ( to save this season) I still think appointing a rookie was a reckless and frankly daft gamble. An average conference manager as a safe pair of hands was required as the squad was just about good enough to stay up. Backing the manager is admirable to a point but when you picked the nag with 3 legs in the paddock it's all a bit irrelevant. I would agree that help is required but think it's way too late to be honest.

Whilst I would agree that it's too late to sack him ( to save this season) I still think appointing a rookie was a reckless and frankly daft gamble. An average conference manager as a safe pair of hands was required as the squad was just about good enough to stay up. Backing the manager is admirable to a point but when you picked the nag with 3 legs in the paddock it's all a bit irrelevant. I would agree that help is required but think it's way too late to be honest.

In defence of the board, they did their job and appointed a manager and have supported him, he needs to deliver as if we were winning games and out of trouble, they be the best board in the league. The team early November was capable of picking up point and winning games, this team is, the league is not great and some marginal gains in certain areas would provided confidence and results is my opinion. There is a big but and we all need to realise it, we are down unless we roll the dice and do something different and I don't mean sacking Kevin, he needs to accept help that may make the difference, when your drowning you don't just go under, you hold your hand out for help! its time!!!

eddyh wrote:As I said, attributes that are simply not enough to run a football club successfully. As we head for the lowest of the low and in all likelihood bankruptcy then I'm not sure that saying they saved the club is strictly accurate.

I absolutely acknowledge that they inherited a mess and were brave to take it on. However the decision making has been absolutely shocking and basically continued the downward trend.
I know that Bill Philips is public enemy number 1 on here and I don't know the guy or what he may or may not have done but if he was running the ship today in the same way it is being run, would he be getting the same excuses made for him? On the crowds we get there is no way we should be pretty much certainties for relegation, how anyone can argue that is incredible.

As I said, attributes that are simply not enough to run a football club successfully. As we head for the lowest of the low and in all likelihood bankruptcy then I'm not sure that saying they saved the club is strictly accurate.

I absolutely acknowledge that they inherited a mess and were brave to take it on. However the decision making has been absolutely shocking and basically continued the downward trend.
I know that Bill Philips is public enemy number 1 on here and I don't know the guy or what he may or may not have done but if he was running the ship today in the same way it is being run, would he be getting the same excuses made for him? On the crowds we get there is no way we should be pretty much certainties for relegation, how anyone can argue that is incredible.

Some attributes the board has:

The willingness to risk losing hard-earned money.
The confidence to take decisions to stop the club haemorrhaging money.
Increasingly thick skins ( I guess ) to be able to cope with abuse.
A love of the club.

Since no-one with any better credentials was prepared to do anything 7 months ago, that is what we have.