timbo
Programmes Room Manager 
QUO fan 4life.
Posts: 2,432
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Post by timbo on Dec 13, 2022 11:57:23 GMT
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hector
TFF member
Posts: 1,308
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Post by hector on Dec 14, 2022 6:42:09 GMT
It still vexes me how negligent the club were with their newly and hard-won promotion that year. Recruitment was farcical and assessing the quality of those new acquisitions, other than Akinfenwa, they were sadly lacking. Who in their right mind would consider offering a trial at a League 1 club to Dean Canoville who had been chucked out of Chertsy Town just because he was Lee’s brother.
Richard Boulton I couldn’t even find on Google and I’d certainly forgotten him and the nonsense with the goalkeeping situation that followed, that League 1 status was just carelessly thrown away and with the tiniest bit of effort we could have stayed up as we only narrowly missed staying up anyway.
The fact that a promotion-winning team was relying on trialists to make up numbers was just typical of the penny-wise-pound-foolish approach that the club had. If the club had stayed up then Nottingham Forest would have been among the opposition and the even if the club had struggled, it would have made more money than the subsequent relegation struggle it had the following year back in League 2.
Such a waste.
I also remember buying the away kit that was released and it was if the strangest material.
I did attend at least a couple of the pre-season friendlies at least. Certainly Newton Abbot and also at Exmouth were Akinfenwa scored a ridiculously sublime goal. Strangely that was the first time I’d ever been to the town of Exmouth despite having lived in Devon for all but 5 years of my life. Little did I know that just over 3 years later I’d be living there and have done ever since.
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Rags
TFF member
Posts: 1,130
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Post by Rags on Dec 14, 2022 17:38:11 GMT
...the nonsense with the goalkeeping situation that followed, that League 1 status was just carelessly thrown away and with the tiniest bit of effort we could have stayed up as we only narrowly missed staying up anyway. The fact that a promotion-winning team was relying on trialists to make up numbers was just typical of the penny-wise-pound-foolish approach that the club had. I think you're being a touch harsh with this view The goalkeeping situation TURNED OUT to be nonsense, yet given that we needed a draw on the last day of the season to stay up suggests that had van Heusden not decided to pack it all in to be a Dutch copper we would have been fine. Bossu was not the answer. Neither, as it turned out, was Gottskalksson; did he disappear back to Scandinavia with the police on his trail or was that urban myth? I was at Barnsley at the end of February to see Paul Jarvie start the only English league game of his career and he was easily not good enough. So in retrospect the goalkeeping situation effectively got us relegated, however its not as if the club didn't try to find a solution. We certainly kept looking for options. I'm sure we can all think of specific occasions which would have kept us up had they been different: mine is Aggy's penalty at Peterborough where his Panenka was easily saved by the Posh keeper. But as that was early October I'm not sure its influence was enough to cause us to be relegate. I think you are dealing with Outcome Bias to lay the blame at a perceived penny-wise-pound-foolish approach. Any one of our signings might have worked, the ones that didn't are easy to blame with hindsight. |
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Post by bomber on Dec 15, 2022 11:39:32 GMT
Gottskalksson did a runner, but it was after refusing to take a random drugs test. news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/t/torquay_united/4633483.stmPhil Barnes, who we signed on loan from Sheffield United thanks to Neil Warnock, was probably the pick of the seven followed by Andy Marriott, who was between the sticks for the final 11 games of the season, of which we won four of the last five to set us up to need a point on the final day against Colchester. The irony was that in the 2005-06 season, when we stayed up thanks to the great escape under Ian Atkins, Marriott was an ever present! |
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hector
TFF member
Posts: 1,308
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Post by hector on Dec 16, 2022 18:38:49 GMT
...the nonsense with the goalkeeping situation that followed, that League 1 status was just carelessly thrown away and with the tiniest bit of effort we could have stayed up as we only narrowly missed staying up anyway. The fact that a promotion-winning team was relying on trialists to make up numbers was just typical of the penny-wise-pound-foolish approach that the club had. I think you're being a touch harsh with this view The goalkeeping situation TURNED OUT to be nonsense, yet given that we needed a draw on the last day of the season to stay up suggests that had van Heusden not decided to pack it all in to be a Dutch copper we would have been fine. Bossu was not the answer. Neither, as it turned out, was Gottskalksson; did he disappear back to Scandinavia with the police on his trail or was that urban myth? I was at Barnsley at the end of February to see Paul Jarvie start the only English league game of his career and he was easily not good enough. So in retrospect the goalkeeping situation effectively got us relegated, however its not as if the club didn't try to find a solution. We certainly kept looking for options. I'm sure we can all think of specific occasions which would have kept us up had they been different: mine is Aggy's penalty at Peterborough where his Panenka was easily saved by the Posh keeper. But as that was early October I'm not sure its influence was enough to cause us to be relegate. I think you are dealing with Outcome Bias to lay the blame at a perceived penny-wise-pound-foolish approach. Any one of our signings might have worked, the ones that didn't are easy to blame with hindsight. I think if you consider we lost Hazell, Woozley, Graham, the likes of Villis, Bouton and even Owen just were no where near as good. So much of that Pre-season was wasted on poor players who were on trial but even if you look at the squad on the back of the programme with the youth team making up the numbers. Good tattooist as he is, Kain Bond was not a League 1 footballer and players like Owen Story and Jamie Gosling came along who later graced the Southern League. For a team that had just secured promotion to the 3rd tier it was poor recruitment early on, and led to the later pound-foolish approach of having to splash out big on the likes of Constantine to make up the gap. The fact we nearly stayed up doesn’t really offer evidence that approach nearly worked more that had recruitment been taken seriously at the start, that side should have stayed up comfortably. Such a waste. The one player I did like, who then didn’t stay for very long was Bruno Mierelles. He looked quite useful in midfield. I think you’re right about the goalkeeping though, Phil Barnes did look fantastic and it was such a blow when he was recalled from his loan and just so typical of Torquay that when we almost looked like we’d done enough to stay up, the three wins required to relegate us happened. |
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