Torquay United v Harrogate Town - FA Cup Rnd 1 - 3/11/12

[AustrianAndyGull]

It's creative writing mate, i know as a Yorkshireman ( i am one too raised in North and South Yorkshire ) it is difficult to even read never mind to even contemplate holding a pen. That's why the internet is a great place for us Yorkshiremen as all we need to do is hit keys and we're away.

If we had players that had matched your players motivation then we'd have won. We didn't so we didn't.

As for the smart arse comment, thanks mate it means a lot. Although the result hasn't taught ME anything because i wasn't involved in the game. The Torquay players WERE so maybe they may have been taught a lesson not to take inferior sides too lightly. If they have then it's all good. Nobody has taught me anything, not even at school really. The only teacher to have taught me owt was Mr Taylor in Science when he kicked me out of his class and when he came outside to check on me i was filling up small empty bottles of Lucozade with some spirits that me and me mate had pilfered from his dad's drinks cabinet in our dinner break. Mr Taylor could smell it and he saw it and confiscated it! He taught me NEVER to do THAT again.

[SuperNickyWroe]

lets move on everyone.
we were sh*t, harrogate scored we didnt.
everyone (apart from us,plymuff, swindon etc) loves a "giantkiller"......
lets concentrate on the league........

[SuperNickyWroe]

I was looking out for Harrogate too - it was like the bit in Bullseye when Jim Bowen says "look at what you could have won"...



To be fair i'd rather have a speedboat than a tie against Hastings! ( oh and chuck in a bendy bully too and i'm away!!! )

what use is a speedboat to you numb nuts?
you live in chesterfield!

[oldpedant]

Nobody has taught me anything, ....

That is most astute/profound thing you've ever written on here!

[AustrianAndyGull]

To be fair i'd rather have a speedboat than a tie against Hastings! ( oh and chuck in a bendy bully too and i'm away!!! )[/quote]

what use is a speedboat to you numb nuts?
you live in chesterfield! [/quote]

Yeah thanks for reminding me Chris!

I'd take it to Rother Valley and rip up the place with my superfast, supersexy speedboat and annoy all the windsurfers who think they're in f*cking Newquay!

[AustrianAndyGull]

Nobody has taught me anything, .... [/quote]

That is most astute/profound thing you've ever written on here![/quote]


Please tell me you forgot to add a little icon at the end?

[AustrianAndyGull]

It's funny as there is a bloke on their forum calling me a Devon Yokel!

Little does he know i'm probably more Yorkie than he'll ever be!

[Scott Brehaut]

That will teach you to be such a smart arse. Your negative comments gave us all the ammunition and motivation we needed to come to your place and win.

By the way, just a thought. You hadnt been beaten at home, but a bunch of country bumpkins who you were expecting to beat 4, 5-0 have just turned you over 1-0, and just to add...in our last 30 fixtures, we have been beaten only 4 times.

Err - thanks for that, however the post that you quote (I can't quote it back as I can only "quote" one quote in a post) from Andy states his belief that we would win 2-0 so quite where you got 4, 5-0 from I don't know.

I seriously doubt that the negative comments on here were read by your players. One would imagine that reason why you won was because we were shit more than anything else.

Anyway, you had your day out, you got the win and got a winnable second round tie. Many congratulations.

[AustrianAndyGull]

Cheers for that Scott, i think in fairness to the annoying Harrogate bloke he has got a point when he says i used some disparaging comments in my opening thread post. I do this often but it is meant in jest really and i don't mean to be derogatory. The bumpkin thing i used because having been to Harrogate zillions of times i know it is a quiet town in rural North Yorkshire so i just used that as a light hearted comment. I did say that they were sh*t and i stand by that, relative to us and despite the result they aren't a very good team otherwise they would be in league 2. Likewise Man Utd fans can say that WE are sh*t in comparison to them. It's all relative so i'm not apologising for that one. I did say that we SHOULD be hammering them NOT that we WILL hammer them, two entirely different comments and not disparaging at all. I did say we shouldn't take them for granted otherwise they will punish us and they did. I perhaps didn't give the rest of the team individually a mention and i dismissed those with no league experience as players we had never heard of and why should we? Unless you are a serious aficionado of lower non league football then it is reasonable to accept that most of our fans will not have heard of some players.

[royalgull]

There is hardly going to be too many positives after this abject humiliation. There isn't really one excuse we can make. We have bugger all money and have blown a free shot at being one round away from potentially drawing the likes of Man UTd.
This abject cock up cannot be brushed under the carpet.
With all due respect to Harrogate ( a team that are one league higher than Bideford, and believe me they are useless) - they were still playing at ten o'clock on Wednesday night trying to secure a trip to Plainmoor no more than two and a bit days later.
They could only muster 16 supporters and I think I am right in saying they struggled to beat a team three leagues below them in the qualifying round.
And Lings response to all this? - he was bleating about not being able to make preparations because he didn't know which team he was playing.
As I say not ONE excuse for this debacle - but it seems that our bunch of losers just thought that they had to turn up to win.
If Ling had any bottle he would have these bunch of no necks running round the training ground all sunday morning.
The most depressing result since Buckle blew his tactics and lost to Crawley in the cup.

i am annoyed at myself because I can't disagree with any of this.

In the FA Cup shocks happen, no idea why they just do but every single signal that Torquay sent out about this game was negative. Ling's comments about it being a money trip for the club, the ticket pricing, this nonsense about not being able to prepare for a blue square north side at HOME. It was all a bit timid, weak, excuse ridden before we even started. Sends out the wrong message to everyone.

i am amazed we're 7th in the League to be honest, credit goes to Ling and the boys for getting us there because we aren't a very good side. I don't know how we do it but we seem to get results every now and then. We desperately lack attacking talent and I don't know about you but at no point did I have any faith that we'd score on Saturday.

Seen questions on this thread 'where's Mansell gone from last season' last season was a freak to be honest. Mansell for one has always been the same, he's a tryer. He gives you everything, he tackles, runs, his passing is ok and last season he popped up with goals. His career history suggests its not a regular pattern and it's no surpise to me that he's not doing that again. He's not a player you can look at and think 'Well Manse guarantees me 10 goals' He's not that type of player, if he does it's a massive bonus. You can't be reliant on Mansell and to a lesser extent Stevens for 10+ goals a season.

You look through our side and ask 'wehre are the goals coming from' Howe, maybe Stevens and you'd hope Bodin but that's not enough. It's been a problem area for us for over a year and we're no better off now than we were. In fact like I said in the summer I think we're weaker than we were after the Cheltenham game in the forward positions.

I am amazed, flabbergasted, a bit annoyed that Ling hasn't tried solving this. You can't be reliant on one player to get all your teams goals and we are far too reliant on Rene Howe.

[AustrianAndyGull]

There is hardly going to be too many positives after this abject humiliation. There isn't really one excuse we can make. We have bugger all money and have blown a free shot at being one round away from potentially drawing the likes of Man UTd.
This abject cock up cannot be brushed under the carpet.
With all due respect to Harrogate ( a team that are one league higher than Bideford, and believe me they are useless) - they were still playing at ten o'clock on Wednesday night trying to secure a trip to Plainmoor no more than two and a bit days later.
They could only muster 16 supporters and I think I am right in saying they struggled to beat a team three leagues below them in the qualifying round.
And Lings response to all this? - he was bleating about not being able to make preparations because he didn't know which team he was playing.
As I say not ONE excuse for this debacle - but it seems that our bunch of losers just thought that they had to turn up to win.
If Ling had any bottle he would have these bunch of no necks running round the training ground all sunday morning.
The most depressing result since Buckle blew his tactics and lost to Crawley in the cup.[/quote]

i am annoyed at myself because I can't disagree with any of this.

In the FA Cup shocks happen, no idea why they just do but every single signal that Torquay sent out about this game was negative. Ling's comments about it being a money trip for the club, the ticket pricing, this nonsense about not being able to prepare for a blue square north side at HOME. It was all a bit timid, weak, excuse ridden before we even started. Sends out the wrong message to everyone.

i am amazed we're 7th in the League to be honest, credit goes to Ling and the boys for getting us there because we aren't a very good side. I don't know how we do it but we seem to get results every now and then. We desperately lack attacking talent and I don't know about you but at no point did I have any faith that we'd score on Saturday.

Seen questions on this thread 'where's Mansell gone from last season' last season was a freak to be honest. Mansell for one has always been the same, he's a tryer. He gives you everything, he tackles, runs, his passing is ok and last season he popped up with goals. His career history suggests its not a regular pattern and it's no surpise to me that he's not doing that again. He's not a player you can look at and think 'Well Manse guarantees me 10 goals' He's not that type of player, if he does it's a massive bonus. You can't be reliant on Mansell and to a lesser extent Stevens for 10+ goals a season.

You look through our side and ask 'wehre are the goals coming from' Howe, maybe Stevens and you'd hope Bodin but that's not enough. It's been a problem area for us for over a year and we're no better off now than we were. In fact like I said in the summer I think we're weaker than we were after the Cheltenham game in the forward positions.

I am amazed, flabbergasted, a bit annoyed that Ling hasn't tried solving this. You can't be reliant on one player to get all your teams goals and we are far too reliant on Rene Howe.[/quote]

I've have been saying this more or less since Ling took over. Last season for example, although we did amazingly well to finish in the play offs our goals return from strikers other than Howe was poor. Mansell got 12 or something i think. I said in January that we NEEDED help up top and i also believed that if Martin had added a couple of loan players in January then we would have gone up automatically. Ok we brought in Jarvis but that wasn't until well after January and by then it was too late. We had Tai and McPhee on the bench, two players which, although you can't fault their commitment aren't going to be much of a threat. Yes i do realise that Tai got us a couple of important goals that resulted in single goal victories but that in itself proved that we struggled to score goals last season. This season is worse in my opinion and again, like i've said on many occasions this season if it wasn't for Howe we would be knackered. Stevens i'm getting round to liking and he can pop up with a few and cause problems but to be reliant on someone like him who can spend 75% of many games totally absent is heaping more pressure on Howe and rendering our attack particularly ineffective. Mansell hasn't scored i don't think this season, Bodin has stuck a couple of bog standard chances away but has been appalling so Howe again becomes isolated. It is happening all over again and in games if we concede first then it becomes extremely difficult to be confident that we are going to turn it around. Obviously i accept that getting half decent strikers to come to Plainmoor given our geography and budget is tricky but often i am amazed at clubs smaller than us and often non-league that attract players that i believe we could do with. Take Phil Jevons at Hyde, he is better than McPhee or Atieno. He is playing for a side bottom of the conference. Niall Thompson is young and raw but is the kind of player who we need. He moves more than 3 miles an hour and that impetus can have an effect on the tempo of the rest of the squad. I remember when he came on as a sub in away games, especially at Rotherham, he blitzed down the wing but when he got into a crossing position the rest of our players were so lazy that they were still in their own half nearly barring Howe! How the f*ck are we going to score from that! Thompson is an asset and we should be using him and giving him starts now. Let's develop him and use his pace to our advantage. Last season we could grind out 1-0 results requiring minimal chances to score but this season we can't. There is an obvious lack of tempo and energy too from last season which means if we go a goal behind the players confidence is affected now and they aren't confident they can get back into the game. You can just see it out there on the pitch. Confidence is crucial in football and we don't have any. I believe Ling is partly to blame for this undercurrent to fester.