by madgull » 23 Jan 2017, 20:28
I've been seeing a lot of posts talking some tosh, particularly regarding sacking KN or forcing GI out.
- Torquay United is not currently viable as a business. We were days away from the club closing down and were saved by a group of fans. Even by giving us a meagre budget by Conference standards, accepting loans, and by selling numerous players, the stewardship of these people oversaw a huge financial loss.
- We are not an attractive prospect to players. Our budget and geographical situation mean that our recruitment focus has, by necessity, been on either young players who have already failed at multiple clubs and so look to us as their final opportunity to make it professionally or knackered journeymen with injury problems or, by happy chance, ties to the local area. I cannot emphasise this point enough. A lot of 'part timers' have better squads than us because their players can make more money by training a few days a week for and then working a regular job the rest. For us, signing a player isn't just the wages, it's the relocation costs, the boarding, the logistics, and that's even IF they want to uproot to move down to what - contrary to what our rose-tinted local glasses would have us believe - that desirable an area socio-economically. This isn't Football Manager, where we just need to use our budget better to pick up that undiscovered journeyman.
- Motivation/Getting the best out of the players. There is a world of difference between you 'giving 100%' at your job (I use inverted commas because I have seen VERY few people give absolutely everything at their job) and a player giving 100% on the pitch or performing up to the expected standard. Even a small stadium like ours is a pressure cooker, and when the crowd is negative and every false move is met by derision, it is far easier to take the safe option and lump the ball forward than pass. Similarly, ask any sports psychologist and they will tell you that there is no simple way to instill confidence and take a player who has been rejected at multiple clubs into a mental bastion. It's hard enough for the top-paid shrinks to coax psychological strength out of the best sportspeople in the world, now imagine what it's like for a manager (/bus driver/admin assistant/player/coach/general dogsbody) to try and do the same for a bunch of poorly-educated no-hopers, on less money a week than most of this forum, who get a barracking from the stands every time they make a mistake.
- Our only hope of financial survival is a board that is willing to put significant sums of money into the club whilst we make ourselves self-sustaining. That means that for all the talk of TUST being fantastic and having the club's best interests at heart, they were a non-starter. We have seen on this forum already how people usually expect some kind of return for their money (see the responses to the 'save Torquay United from GI' fund and the community share issue), and it's pretty self-evident that what was essentially another group of well-meaning fans would not have been able to keep us solvent.
- Plainmoor is, in terms of transport links, facilities and expansion potential, not good enough. As much as all the old heads on this forum have fond memories of the place and there is this nostalgic attachment to the ground, we cannot stay there. Miraculous investment aside (and I'm talking at the level of buying the school, improving all the roads around it etc), we MUST explore the possibility of moving to a stadium with the ability to attract more fans, both home and away, provide other revenue streams and survive the winter calendar. For that reason, outright opposing GI's wish to purchase Plainmoor is shortsighted. What we SHOULD be doing is getting our councillors to sign a deal to the tune that GI will get Plainmoor, but ONLY get it when the new stadium is built.
- Sacking KN will put us in an even worse financial situation than we already are with no guarantee of an improvement, mainly for the reasons discussed above regarding player recruitment and motivation. Nicholson has proved that he can keep us up from far worse positions than we find ourselves currently in. He has been hamstrung by injuries to Young, Lathrope, the sales of MacDonald and Blissett, and the lack of any kind of real funding to get players in above our current quality. In terms of risk/reward, sacking the manager right now is crazy. Yeah, it would make us feel good and like we're 'taking action', but sometimes the best way to 'do something' is to do nothing, not simply act because we want to be seen to be doing something productive.
I've been seeing a lot of posts talking some tosh, particularly regarding sacking KN or forcing GI out.
- Torquay United [i]is not currently viable as a business[/i]. We were days away from the club closing down and were saved by a group of fans. Even by giving us a meagre budget by Conference standards, accepting loans, and by selling numerous players, the stewardship of these people oversaw a huge financial loss.
- We are not an attractive prospect to players. Our budget and geographical situation mean that our recruitment focus has, by necessity, been on either young players who have already failed at multiple clubs and so look to us as their final opportunity to make it professionally or knackered journeymen with injury problems or, by happy chance, ties to the local area. I cannot emphasise this point enough. A lot of 'part timers' have better squads than us because their players can make more money by training a few days a week for and then working a regular job the rest. For us, signing a player isn't just the wages, it's the relocation costs, the boarding, the logistics, and that's even IF they want to uproot to move down to what - contrary to what our rose-tinted local glasses would have us believe - that desirable an area socio-economically. This isn't Football Manager, where we just need to use our budget better to pick up that undiscovered journeyman.
- Motivation/Getting the best out of the players. There is a world of difference between you 'giving 100%' at your job (I use inverted commas because I have seen VERY few people give absolutely everything at their job) and a player giving 100% on the pitch or performing up to the expected standard. Even a small stadium like ours is a pressure cooker, and when the crowd is negative and every false move is met by derision, it is far easier to take the safe option and lump the ball forward than pass. Similarly, ask any sports psychologist and they will tell you that there is no simple way to instill confidence and take a player who has been rejected at multiple clubs into a mental bastion. It's hard enough for the top-paid shrinks to coax psychological strength out of the best sportspeople in the world, now imagine what it's like for a manager (/bus driver/admin assistant/player/coach/general dogsbody) to try and do the same for a bunch of poorly-educated no-hopers, on less money a week than most of this forum, who get a barracking from the stands every time they make a mistake.
- Our only hope of financial survival is a board that is willing to put significant sums of money into the club whilst we make ourselves self-sustaining. That means that for all the talk of TUST being fantastic and having the club's best interests at heart, they were a non-starter. We have seen on this forum already how people usually expect some kind of return for their money (see the responses to the 'save Torquay United from GI' fund and the community share issue), and it's pretty self-evident that what was essentially another group of well-meaning fans would not have been able to keep us solvent.
- Plainmoor is, in terms of transport links, facilities and expansion potential, not good enough. As much as all the old heads on this forum have fond memories of the place and there is this nostalgic attachment to the ground, we cannot stay there. Miraculous investment aside (and I'm talking at the level of buying the school, improving all the roads around it etc), we MUST explore the possibility of moving to a stadium with the ability to attract more fans, both home and away, provide other revenue streams and survive the winter calendar. For that reason, outright opposing GI's wish to purchase Plainmoor is shortsighted. What we SHOULD be doing is getting our councillors to sign a deal to the tune that GI will get Plainmoor, but ONLY get it when the new stadium is built.
- Sacking KN will put us in an even worse financial situation than we already are with no guarantee of an improvement, mainly for the reasons discussed above regarding player recruitment and motivation. Nicholson has proved that he can keep us up from far worse positions than we find ourselves currently in. He has been hamstrung by injuries to Young, Lathrope, the sales of MacDonald and Blissett, and the lack of any kind of real funding to get players in above our current quality. In terms of risk/reward, sacking the manager right now is crazy. Yeah, it would make us feel good and like we're 'taking action', but sometimes the best way to 'do something' is to do nothing, not simply act because we want to be seen to be doing something productive.
