FL2: Newport County v Torquay United - 28th September 2013

Thought Newport were a good team, though interesting style. Still looked a Conference side but meant as a compliment. They were better at what they do than we were at what we do. Enjoyed the game overall. Feel that Knill is losing his grip a little now. I`ve always thought his bias towards picking attacking teams some what niave. Ling worked on not giving goals away, then trying to score. Sounder policy than ok to let 2 goals a game in `cause we`ll score 3. Someone needs to point out to Knill, we are letting 2 goals in but not scoring. The usual excuses will appear, but nothing will happen in the next game. If we do not beat York, a draw is a bad result, Knill needs to overhaul his approach completely. No doom and gloom here, just pointing out what is obvious to me. Ten games nearly and still an unsettled squad, needing other players to come in to patch things up. Not good planning in any business. If football really is a results based business, look at Knills record with us so far. And I do count last season because at the end of the day, he was a manager in charge of a football team the same as any other manager.

lambrettagull 

I thought York played really well against us in the game at Plainmoor near the end of last season. On that basis, and with the Summer to work with his players, I was expecting Nigel Worthington's team to achieve better results than they have so far this term. In fact it is through demonstrating this faith in Worthington and his team, that has stopped me accumulating as many points as I might have in the TFF Prediction League.

However, there might be a possibility that they have turned the corner at just the wrong time from our prospective. Having witnessed our hopeless and ineffective attempts at breaking through the Pompey defence in our Paints Trophy tie a month or so back, I have to wonder whether things are now clicking into place for York if they are able to fire four past Portsmouth themselves. Judged on a few minutes of Youtube highlights however, it does look as though young Mr. Azeez is well capable of beating York single-handedly so I'll be turning up at Plainmoor with a positive attitude, and certainly won't start berating Knill until the clock has at least reached twenty past three without us taking the lead.

We would have made a different managerial appointment if we had just wished to see some adjustments to the Martin Ling approach. By appointing Knill we chose the complete overhaul option. We've overhauled Ling's ideas totally. The degree to which we've done that will most probably be demonstrated by Saturday's team sheet showing only a couple of Lingy's old regular starters, Manse and Bodin, in the starting line up, although out of necessity rather than choice, Knill may be forced to field Kevin Nicholson also.

We rejected the option of appointing someone a bit more like Lingy, or keeping the man himself come to that, and have decided to go down a radically different route. I don't think we can in all honesty be contemplating before the end of September is out, asking the Manager to completely overhaul his approach. I'm sure he clearly outlined what his approach would be only a couple of months ago when we chose to let him implement his ideas in preference to the different approaches being advocated by other candidates for the job of team manager.

I would expect the Board to fully back the man they've so recently appointed, as should the majority of fans who were rewarded with the man they asked for. 

What a relief!!! :-)

Just to correct the date of the game at Somerton Park, of course it should read 1st June 1940.