Torquay United Fans Forum

hector wrote: How can you suggest that Cambridge is irrelevant? What utter nonsense. His job is still to try and win football matches. But he couldn't. In fact it should have been easier for him there.

Whilst at Cambridge, Martin Ling had access to a budget that was one of the top six in the division. He was also permitted to bring in his own fitness and nutrition coach as well as having access to training and medical facilities that would not be out of place in League One.

There are no two ways about it, Martin Ling failed spectacularly at Cambridge. We had a poor start to his first season in charge and looked like relegation candidates, but a late run of form meant a 10th place finish and fresh hope for his first full season with what he termed as "his players" and "his team". However, closer inspection of that run showed that all of the points came against sides in the bottom half of the table.

The following season was an absolute disaster. The players looked unfit, disinterested and demoralised. There were strong rumours that some players did not understand what they were supposed to be doing on the pitch and Ling even admitted in the local media that the players weren't doing as he told them but that he didn't know why that was happening. Once again we could not even draw against teams in the top half of the table, let alone get the odd 3 points. That season we won a paltry 11 games out of a possible 46 and finished just 6 points above the relegation spots. All on a top six budget. It was only thanks to Ling's successor that we managed to stay up in the end.

I am absolutely certain, along with a lot of other Cambridge fans, that Martin Ling would have gotten us relegated that season had our Board not done something. We were in free fall and with each passing abject defeat the situation just got more and more desperate. We were getting hammered by teams assembled on a fraction of Ling's budget that regularly played in front of a few hundred people.It wasn't just that we were losing, it was how we were losing. We were truly pathetic to watch.

That may sound familiar to perhaps scores of other managers and teams in the past, but you have to put it into perspective by considering the resources that he had at his disposal. We weren't just mid-table dross, we were relegation certainties that were getting spanked almost every week home and away. All on a budget that 18 other teams in the division couldn't even come close to. It's all well and good when a manager points to his budget to explain mediocrity, but what about when that budget and other resources at his disposal should bring about something more than a team sitting in the bottom 3 in February?

I understand why people want to give it more time. We went through the whole business of keeping him because we couldn't afford to sack him. In the end though it became so obvious that we were doomed to the drop that our Board had to do something, and they did it just in the nick of time.

I hope you folks don't have to wait for it to get to that point. Hopefully things will pick up and this whole discussion will become moot. Only time will tell. I'd say that he hasn't had long enough in the job yet. But I'd also say that for your sakes he musn't be given too much longer to get it right.

I was moved to register on this forum, not to gloat, but because I feel as if I've stumbled into some bizarre time warp.

It's weird because it's *exactly* what happened at Cambridge United, and I'm pretty sure that you can readily find some Orient fans that would say the same thing. Everything is so spookily similar. Right from the "give the man a chance" phase to the utterly demoralising unexpected and inexplicable heavy defeats (we lost home games 0-5 and 3-6 as well as losing 0-4 away in one thoroughly depressing and morale sapping short spell).We had exactly the same debates on our boards, with the same division of opinion between the less patient and more reserved posters, as well as the endless threads about consolidation, budgetary restraints, and apparent tactical ineptitude. We also endured the same cringe inducing public criticisms of the players by Ling in our local press. He just kept on blaming the players when things went wrong. Some of those players were incredibly young as well. Martin Ling put together a (relatively) expensive squad of very ordinary players that didn't even manage to put in ordinary performances if truth be told.

In the end the whole saga sapped the club almost dry. Not just the players, but the people that worked at the club and the supporters. Both casual and staunch. It's like a malaise that you just can't see past in the end. It drags everybody down and makes watching your team a thoroughly depressing experience.

I hope that Martin Ling can sort things out for you. There can be no doubting that he is a thoroughly decent chap that works incredibly hard. However, he just does not seem to know what to do when things go wrong, other than to point out the size of his budget and blame his players. My personal belief is that he is not a great tactician, nor is he a person that can motivate players when the going gets tough.

Well, I wish you guys the best of luck. This little dose of deje-vu has brought back very unpleasant memories for me. My club is just starting to recover from Lings damaging tenure as manager. Our new man has a much smaller budget and has an almost entirely new squad. We've already reached a points total that took us until January to reach last year, and then another whole month before gaining any more points after that. There is a renewed optimism around the place that is just so liberating and refreshing.

I hope Martin Ling makes things right and it all comes good for you, but I somehow suspect that he won't.

Keep your chins up lads.