Torquay United Fans Forum

Thanks for that SaintDoglet, much appreciated.

No luck with BBC Radio Devon. Any ideas where I'll get the commentary?

Has Gary's brother left the club as well? I haven't seen him mentioned anywhere.

Well, what a day that was! And who knew that Southampton Gull, SuperNickyWroe etc had such power to bring a football club to its knees. I can see that Gary Johnson might well have been hurt and upset by some of the comments on the forum if he ever read them but the idea that Clark Osborne has been influenced by anything posted on here is quite ludicrous. It seems clear that the Council have refused yet again to risk the freehold of Plainmoor and Osborne has gone for his own purely financial reasons. The way that GJ did his usual press call without any idea of what was going on just shows again how badly the club has been run. Some of the posts from other club supporters about their experience of administration have been encouraging but strap in, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Agree that GJ looks and sounds a broken man. The toll on him and his family must be huge. It is a tricky one but football has its own "rules" and loyalty from clubs to their managers or players isn't one of them. I thought the team was awful under Gary Owers and it did seem as if the talk on here that the club was deliberately being run down was true. So I was really surprised when Owers was sacked and Johnson brought in. What a change. Suddenly Jamie Reid was scoring for fun. How did that happen? Confidence I suppose. Anyway few people would complain about the promotion or the near miss on promotion to the league when we lost to Hartlepool. The same manager that accomplished that has been unable to rebuild the team. We would be very lucky to make the play-offs. Some on this site have asked who should step in. Well I don't know. Who would have suggested Johnson? I don't think there would be any shortage of applicants when the vacancy does come up but I hope it is sooner rather than later. I can't watch Johnson's post match interviews anymore. The man is suffering.

One of the things I found most worrying about the Dover game was Gary Johnson's body language in the postmatch interview. He looked and sounded like a broken man.

I remember seeing the gulls beat Luton at Kenilworth Road in a cup game. I live in the South-east and it always hurts looking at the tables to think I used to regularly watch us play Brentford, Fulham, Northampton, Peterborough, Cambridge, Gillingham, Stevenage, Orient, the list goes on. I'm probably nearer to the Eternal Pessimist except where Torquay's concerned so promotion here we come!

A lot of the talk here when Osborne took over was how his plan was to run the club into the ground, take us part-time make his money and clear off. It certainly seemed to be happening and Gary Owers was the man to do it. Relegation and then hovering at the bottom end of NLS. Probably the worst period in all my years following Torquay. Yet suddenly Owers was out Johnson was in, we stormed the league and missed promotion to League 3 by a whisker. Johnson might have inherited some decent players from Owers but Jamie Reid couldn't hit a barn door until Johnson came along. Our better players have taken the opportunity to move on and you can't blame them for that but for whatever reason Johnson hasn't been able to replace them. Last year was very ordinary and this year has been truly awful with a stack of players obviously not up to NL standard and that is clearly down to Johnson and his team. I don't think Johnson is a bad manager but by Christmas it was obvious we were only going one way. I do think sometimes they stay too long at a club and I definitely think it was time to say thanks very much for some great times but now you should go. That's not going to happen so I guess we just have to wait to see which players we can hang on to and if he can find a few decent NLS level players to get us straight back up.