FAC RD 3 Torquay United V Brighton 2nd Jan 2010

Very disappointing. Not just the result, rather the manner of the defeat. We went out with a whimper. We created nothing and offered little threat all afternoon. Any suggestion as to why Bucks swapped Carlisle and Thomson from the wings down which they've caused so many problems recently? Thomson saw plenty of the ball, but from inside his own half most of the time, and struggled against better defenders than he's been facing in recent weeks. He wasn't helped by a complete lack of service from the central areas.

As for Tyrone (no doubt plenty will exress an opinion on him), he had a pretty poor game (first half especially). But there were large numbers on the pop today that couldn't criticise him quickly enough every time the ball went near him. If they thought were helping his performance by abusing him, they are perhaps a little more stupid than they sounded. I heard it suggested that 'he doesn't even want the ball' - is it any wonder? It was embarrasing at times.

As for the MOM award, no surprise there - Ellis wins it every time he plays because he's a fans favourite. For me it was Charnock that kept everything together at the back today, and his performance put Ellis' in the shade.

Can't explain why but feel strangely indifferent to today's result. We certainly didn't play as well as we have in recent games and whilst I don't think that any Brighton supporters would of felt aggrieved if we had got a draw, the marginally better team won.

As noted on previous occasions, the larger crowd seemed to contribute to a lack of atmosphere and in today's case this was not helped by the equally subdued away support. Interesting to contrast our tremendous and vocal away following at Bournemouth with that of today's visitors.

There were some strong points in our performance with Poke making a couple of good saves and Charnock & Ellis proving as good as any pairing we have had this season - the former has impressed with every game recently and the latter always seems to produce the goods when given the opportunity. For me, Hargreaves was MoM for another excellent captain's performance of totsl commitment. Most of the others had their moments with the exception of Thompson who was truly awful in the first half and only slightly better in the second. I acknowledge that he has played well on occasions but in recent games he has done little to impress. This afternoon most of his passing was dire and on several occasions he appeared to win tackles only to have the ball taken back off him. Sorry Ty, but the sooner we have alternative cover for Hargreaves and Wroe the better.

The introduction of Nico, Sills and Stevens with only ten minutes remaining did liven things up culminating in a well rehearsed free kick routine when Carlisle tapped the ball to Nico whose thunderous drive brought only the second save of the game from the Seagulls' keeper - the first having been from Ellis' strong first half header.

Nice to catch up with a few 'old faces' today - Mike and Martin in The Union and Colin on the Pop. Not sure if any of them are readers of TFF but if so it was good to see you.

Quip of the day? When the Brighton player went down and stayed down in the first half only to get swiftly to his feet after a few second's treatment. A slight pause in the crowd's jeering and a lone voice boomed out - "It's a miracle!". Made I laff...

Yep - credit to those involved in getting this game on today. Even though we lost, the cost of replaying the tie would have brought about significant unwelcome additional expenditure.

Speaking to someone at the game today they echoed thegreat reports that we have been lucky to have so far - particularly that we clearly lacked Wroe and Zebs - and Thompson was very disappointing again today. Sounds like Hargreaves is really struggling physically at the moment to recover from matches so we might be seeing more of Thompson over the remainder of the season unless there any new blood brought-in over the next few weeks.

Back to the league and perhaps an interesting month on the transfer front beckons - shame a £100k+ minimum sum that victory today would have brought us didn't come our way to enable Bucks to have a bit more of a warchest, but better than nothing.

Good post Fonda....agree with most of that, Tyrone had one of those days, he didnt get so much stick from the grandstand side, sad that these idiots think that booing a player is in anyway helpful.......considering our small gates we certainly have a fair percentage of half wits at Plainmoor.
Thompson was perhaps, not helped by our inability to hold the ball up in front of him and Greavsie's lack of mobility beside him......every time he had the ball he was under pressure.

As for the wing switching....i think i may be able to answer that one. Brighton's right back the Arsenal loanee Hoyte has been in exceptional form and i think Bucks fancied Carlisle to help stop him and by switching Jake to the right wing it would have meant that he was up against the weaker full back.
It worked to a degree as Hoyte wasn't that influential........unfortunately Jake had a bit of an off day so didn't create much himself.
I'd guess that Jake will be back on the left for the next match....

It was always going to be a struggle without Zebs, Wroe and Robbo (no long throws) and those players replacing them needed to stand up and be counted.

Ellis played his part and perhaps Robbo and his long throw will be the extra quality needed against the Daggers next week.

Tyrone had possibly the worst game in a Torquay shirt that I can remember. Couldn't tackle, couldn't pass, couldn't do much. Unfortunately the bench didn't offer a suitable replacement - if there was I'm sure he would have been off after about 30 minutes.

Benyon against bigger/quicker defenders was always going to fail and he did. How we could have done with an Akinfenwa type player. I don't think I would have given him the extension to his contract.

Thought Smith and Thomson both had poor games by their standards - both easily lost the ball when booting the ball into Waitrose carparkwould have been the best option. Thomson in particular lost the ball a lot without seeming to want to win it.

Even Carlise had a poor game.

Fair play to Brighton, they had a that little bit extra in quality (except that cheating git of a right back - he seemed to make the biggest recovery since Lazarus, when he appeared to have been shot by a the Popside sniper).

Shame as Brighton were there for the taking. Saying that I'm sure we will be playing them and the Scum next year.

Difficult call as to whether to bring on Nico, Sills and Frodo earlier would have changed the game. First time this season that I can recall that the bench seemingly short on 'game changers' - no disrespect to the Youth lads.

Had to explain to a Baggie supporter who had turned up for his first game that we are better than that (normally).

Right I'm off for a bath and a bit of Ravi Shankar.

I arrived at the ground and was greeted with the news that the gates would not be opening until 2.15pm as there was another pitch inspection at that time. Crooky had gone into the club shop and came out with the news that the game was going ahead, The words I got a short while later stated the ref was going start to the game and after 30 minutes see if it he could let the game continue.

Could we have won this game, well yes if we were not badly missing on the pitch two players who really would have made the real difference as the two players who played where those players would have played, did not do well. I’m not one for knocking players, but Thompson was as poor as I have ever seen him, lazy and poor passing, never looking where he was playing the ball and looking like he was just there for a kick about. It’s a good job he had Hargreaves on with him, as he battled and fought for the ball.

The team selection was as expected really, it was only ever going to be about would Bucks play Sills or Rendell with Benyon and he choose Rendell who played well without ever really looking like scoring a goal. Not sure why Bucks switched Carlisle with Thomson on the wings, but did not do as well on the right wing as he does on the left. But then he never was able to get past the quality defenders from this 1st division team as he has been doing against defenders from the 2nd division.

Before I go any further I think I should say a big well done to our ground staff who worked on the pitch right up to kick-off time.

Tomson did start the game of very well to begin with, his pace got him to one ball and we played a good ball into Benyon who was in the box, Benyon took one touch of the ball and fired in a shot, but he had the space and time to take the ball closer to the goal and maybe should have.

Thompson was so guilty of just giving the ball away and it was a good job the likes of Ellis were prepared to really get stuck in and win the ball back for us. The ref did not have too bad a game, but Benyon was clearly fouled and nothing was given and then 5 seconds later he gave Brighton a soft free kick.

It was send long and high to the far edge of our box, Smith was out jumped and the player headed into our box, the Brighton forward out to the left of the goal and his back to it, hooked the ball over his head and Poke plucked the ball out of the air just under the crossbar.

I was expecting at any time to see Brighton step up their game and start passing us off the park, but it did not happen and while we so often failed to play that final good pass, we still at times played some good passing moves. Smith came forward with the ball well, played it up to Carlisle who drove it across to Thomson whose cross was blocked but the ball then fell to Carlisle. He flicked it up and hit it on the volley, but his shot went well wide.

I thought he were going to go a goal up after two quick corners we won, the second one found the head of Charnock and it had goal written all over it, but the keeper got his hands to it and pushed it over the bar.

Charnock it should be said had a very solid game in defence for us and he could have also won the man of the match award, but it was given to Mark Ellis and he did give everything he had again for the team.

We became even more guilty of playing poor final balls, good build up play coming to nothing and at this stage, Thomson was finding it much harder to beat his man and more often than not didn’t.

There was a great one two move between Thomson and Rendell out on the right, but when Thomson played the ball into the box there was only Benyon there and it was far to high for him to get and it sailed over his head on it.

Another good move saw Thomson receive a great ball by Carlisle, he laid it back to Mansell who played the ball back inside for Thomson to run onto and run into the box, he hit a good left foot shot, but wide of the post.

Ellis did dive in to try and win a tackle on the halfway line, but the ball was just poked past him and then passed out wide on the right, Smith was nowhere to be seen and Mansell had to come racing across and slide in but got the player and not the ball and got booked for it.

That was the first half and while we had not played that well and only in spurts when we did, we deserved to go in at half time level.

At the start of the second half Ellis won his header and it had such power on it,the ball went over the defenders heads and Benyon was onto it, just he was so slow and instead of trying to go to the right of the defender and try and get a shot away, he goes to his left, taking the ball away from goal and then he lost out to the defender.

Hargreaves was still doing his bit and getting stuck in and sadly Thompson was showing no improvement and still giving the ball away far too often. Its hard to see up the other end of the pitch( way I stand on the halfway line) but it looked like Carlisle had a good shot blocked in the box.

We got lucky after some poor defending saw two Brighton players both with the chance of getting a shot on goal, the one who did take it with only Poke to beat, fired it high over the bar.

Brighton’s no 10 started to cause our defence many problems and he forced a few good saves out of Poke. Just after this Poke made a fine one handed save and pushed the ball around the post, it came back onto the pitch and a Brighton player put it in the net. The Brighton fans up the other end thought it was a goal, we sang that it was not, but from the corner they went and got the only goal of the game.

Brighton’s no 20 was unchallenged and his header flew past Poke to the only part of the goal that gave Poke no chance at all to save it, right in the top corner and skinning the underside of the bar on its way in.

Bucks then made three changes all at once, maybe a bit to late? Nico for Smith, Sills for Benyon and Stevens for Thomson and this last change saw some fans booing their displeasure to see Thomson being taken off.

With Sills on and you knew it was going to be route one football and Sills did well to win some headers but who was there to pick up the flick ones? Hargreaves had a great shot blocked after a good move when Sills played a good ball out to Carlisle on the right and his cross found Hargreaves.

Stevens got chopped down out wide on the left and Nico sent in a good ball from the free kick, in the end it came back out to Stevens who hit a good shot but sadly wide of the post. We had one more good chance from a free kick just out side the box, Nico hit a great shot, but that keeper got his hands to hit and over the bar it went.

So we lost and if I’m honest we did not deserve to win and not we just need to get back to our league games and trying to get further up the table.





A packed Plainmoor











Players warming up, ground staff working hard and the ref still checking the pitch.
































Bucks testing the wind?







Players coming out




Players going in ;D