Torquay United V Stevanage 4th October 2008

Merse

During the second half of last season and the first month or so of this season Buckle made significant errors - like many Managers have. During this period fans have debated the merits of the Manager, as football fans across the world tend to do. You keep referring back, and seem to genuinely believe, that any anti Buckle stuff is merely the consequence of a group of obviously misguided people who "simply could not contain their failure to cope with the loss of bragging rights when we lost all at the end of last season and had the insult of Exeter City succeeding instead of us to add to injury"

This is not the case, in my opinion. Buckle has deserved to be criticized, in the same way he deserves some credit for our recent run. Fans were critical of Buckle a long time before the City Play Off games. Indeed, I would suggest that the reason why many fans got frustrated is that from January last year we could have predicted what was going to happen. We had been found out and Buckle's tactics were getting very predictable. I could not give a toss that it was Exeter City who beat us - However, I was fuming that our Manager had been found wanting and had made some ridiculous decisions during, and in the run up to, our two most important games of the season. On a related point, criticisms of Buckle this season, for example after the Ebbsfleet game, were not the result of some hangover from our Play off defeat. Torquay fans are used to overcoming disappointment. If that was not the case we'd have all jumped ship years ago. Buckle was critisised because, for whatever reason, we started the season in a shambles. We were hopelessly under prepared, with a Manger who still had no clue what his best team was. Assuming Buckle is completely free to play the players he sees fit, he is the only one who should be held responsible for this and such misguided experiments like Hargreaves at centre back.

In my opinion, the whole discussion on Buckle is dominated by two polarised protagonists who are both living in cloud cuckoo land. On the one hand Mr Shaw, seems unable to credit Buckle for anything positive whilst laying the blame for everything negative solely on his shoulders. At the other end of scale, Merse seems content to credit Buckle with everything under the Sun, whilst refusing to accept that he has any culpability when things go wrong. In reality, Buckle has made a decent fist of his first Managerial post and with the help of the extensive support of the board and considerable back up staff has assembled two decent squads. However, he has also made some glaring and costly errors along the way.

Just as four games was stupidly early to start calling for a Manager's head, it is far too early for people to start lavishing too much praise on Buckle. The difference between success and failure at this level is a fine fine line, and may be the result of conditions completely unrelated to the decisions of the Manager. The bottom line is that a large proportion of the criticism leveled at Bucks was fully justified (in the context of football). Some may have gone too far, but for the most part has been just worried fans venting their frustrations. It may not be productive, but that's football. Lets hope we really have turned the corner - opposition managers will have real trouble trying to predict who and how we are going to play. That has not been the case for some time. For the first times in ages I am looking forward to watching our next game. Very often during the last 6 months watching TUFC has felt like going to work.

You state that you would like to ask fans who critisise players whether they know of the "precise managerial instructions" that a player is playing to. Surely in 99.9% of cases fans will not. Does this render any fans discussion of players as void? In some cases, such as the Play Off first leg even the players did not understand the precise managerial instructions! Tell me, were you actually aware of the precise managerial instructions given to Tim Sills when you questioned his bottle during the Crawley match? I wonder if Sills viewed your comments as "advice" from a "terrace smart arse"?

Enzo, it's your opinion Buckle made "significent errors" not a FACT. Even though you share that opinion with several others it no more makes it a FACT than my view that he did NOT make significant errors is also an opinion NOT a fact.

Dsane was accused of "jumping out of tackles" and not being "passionate"...................that is a little bit different then the scenario I described of Sills at Crawley where in my opinion he avoided close contact with a certain opposition defender(Quinn) as much as he could get away with. I never said Sills "jumped" out of challenges with Quinn, indeed he beat him to a challenge to lay on the goal at Broadfield......................it was scored by Dsane ironically.

You can defend the nastiness and vindictiveness of those calling for Buckle's head as much as you like........................it will not alter my opinion one iota - especially as such defence comes from you who has spent the past few years trying to rubbish most opinions I hold.

Dave, when Paul Buckle starts putting in a four day week and decides to commute from 90 miles away, when he oversees our relegation and then still presides over a further one perhaps we'll attempt to compare like with like shall we?

Being critical of a player's performance is way different than questioning his commitment or honesty. In fact I would go as far as to say some of the most inept and skill challenged players we have had have been amongst the most committed and honest souls we have seen wearing the yellow shirt.....................I'm sure even Enzo could think of one!

If Bucks gets us up to League 1, I think we'll all be delighted.

Yep, fair enough.....all in my opinion.

I very rarely know the facts and have never sought to suggest otherwise in order to indicate that my interpretation is more informed than others. Some people do.

You are of course correct, I do disagree with a fair amount of your opinions.........although you do have an awful lot! As has been mentioned elsewhere, forums would be pretty dull if that were not the case. My honest opinion is that there have been occasions where you yourself have strayed into "vindictive" territory when, perhaps with justification, outlining your opinion and interpretation of the latter years of the Bateson regime. Shoot me down if I am wrong here, but one of the the things I have in my mind relates to less than complimentary comments about the appearance of Sue and Debbie Bateson and application of make up?? Might be wrong and if I am, I will wholeheartedly withdraw the comment. Perhaps in this context you may understand why, in my opinion, your repeated reference to the nastiness of the anti Buckle stuff is somewhat contradictory. We were crap in the first month of the season..........that is why Buckle was critisised.

And....yes I can think of a fully committed, but skill challenged player. Thankfully, I no longer have to watch him!!

Always worth listening to: Get on to the official Stevenage Town website and listen to Graham Westley's overview of Saturday's game, particularly the revelation that his squad cannot cope with having to endure losing a player or two and that it "unbalances" them.....................how different to OUR squad; how many players were we missing then?

By way of contrast to Westley's honest appraisal, listen then to the bullshit of Crawley Town's Steve Evans as he starts out with his usual anti ref rant followed by the hackneyed "they're all after Steve Evans" rubbish.

Revealing insights into the characters of two rival managers!