Torquay United Fans Forum

arcadia wrote:Cox walks out
His assistant walks out

Ramshaw never walked out, he offered to stay and his offer was rejected. He's one of the few that come out of this debacle with some credit. He could have left at exactly the same time as Cox.

Stevie_RitchTea wrote:The fixture lists can be made in such a way that Torquay play at home on the same day as Truro play away and vice versa - if not they wouldn't be able to share the ground!

Yes but their fixtures for the rest of this season are already set.

1. Give enough money to stabilise the club's current financial status, as in pay off all the debts we know are there but the directors won't/can't mention and won't pay off with their initial investment.
2. Invest heavily in the club to try and retain the team's Conference status this season - saving a season or two stuck in the CS would be an absolute godsend for the club. If not then take the pain and bankroll the club back into the Conference, taking necessary heavy loss.
3. Immediately begin planning to move the stadium out to somewhere in the Willows or near the new South Devon Link Road. Send out a large scale mailshot to people in Torbay asking what sporting and entertainment facilities they want in the Bay but it's lacking. Use the results of this to build those facilities alongside the stadium and make them directly owned by the club. This will help create substantial non attendance related income streams for the club and help fund it in the future.
4. Set aside something like £5m and put it into a trust where the money can only be used to fund youth development in the Bay via Torquay United. 5% interest on this sum is £250k a year - people with large bank accounts on this level get much more preferential interest rates than the crap us mugs get. All the interest gets used on an annual basis to fund the youth system, the original amount is never touched. More than a decent sum to help form the core of youth development on a long term basis with no extra funding required in the future.
5. Kind of a vanity thing here but switch the away kit back to a permanent black and white to respect the club's history and have the club's badge redesigned, the crap Motorola Gull needs to go, it doesn't say anything about the club and looks awful. Contract a decent kit maker for the club such as Adidas - even if it loses money.
6. Try to get fans to invest into the club in small amounts and let them vote on certain minor subjects - Spanish clubs do this, even Seattle Sounders in the MLS does to a lesser extent.
7. Attempt to set up kind of link with Southampton FC regarding youth development and the loaning of players. If they don't want to loan players, then a deal (paid for if necessary) where some of their youth development team works on training our youth staff and it's systems.
8. With some kind of youth system in place and new stadium complex in place, run the club entirely within it's means (aside from the odd transfer to help push for promotion in Jan or escape relegation). With the above changes, the club should be able to sustain L2 football, if it grows over them then maybe L1 as Yeovil managed for half a decade or so. However sustainability is the key word, I wouldn't throw cash at the club to get the team promoted, only for it to fall away a couple season down the line.
9. Commission a new club history book to update the one made in 1999 but of a higher quality print...and with less use of comic sans (who on earth thought different fonts for different chapters was a good idea?)
10. Beat Exeter City. Repeatedly.

Glostergull wrote:It doesn't matter one jot if ten people offered their serviice and advice. if they want money for it then no. we cannot afford that. and that has been the problem all along. There is no guarantee that any advice would give a miracle cure but one thing is for sure, those who offer services or have been rumoured (because despite the newspaper reports it is conjecture at the end of the day) really want to look to get a few bob into their pockets. They can walk away knowing that even if United fall down they have come out of it with something.
That is the main problem with the way things are. People are always wanting to earn something out of it. and often something for nothing. we earned a lot of money during Martin Lings tenure and I still wonder where most of it went even allowing for The Millions pumped in from The Bristols. Mr Bristol. God rest his soul would have turned in his grave to see the way his Thea was taken advantage of. and i am so sad for her. she was plunged into a crisis through no fault of her own and I for one would not have blamed her for leaving when she lost him.

For the huge amounts that Thea was losing every single season, she could have appointed an experienced football knowledgeable CEO to run the club, even on £100k and still have cut the losses to herself substantially and directed investment properly. Instead she decided to be chairwoman despite no business or football experience. No one denies she lost a lot of money but she didn't help herself and nearly killed in the club in the process.

Torquay will win again....when we're in the Conference South.

lucy6lucy wrote:Now that's it's officially confirmed. What's the odds that we play them twice next season at plainmoor(LWS). And they have the right for the home ends, in there "home fixture".

Rather perversely it'd make sense for them to open up two of the home stands to 'away' supporters (aka Torquay fans) like we've done on occasion when big teams have visited. They'd end up basically stealing a home gate off us, as the vast majority of fans there will be Torquay 'home' fans with a couple hundred Truro fans hanging around in the family stand or Bench but Truro as the designated 'home' team will get all the gate receipts. Even more ridiculously it'd be by a large distance their biggest 'home' attendance of the season :}

I hope the board has put something in their contract with Truro in regards to this...

I'll eat my hat if he stays with us in the Conference South. There's nothing he can gain from it and there's plenty of Conference sides that'll give him a chance next season even with his recent injury. If he recovers fully, he's one of the best midfielders in the league.

Well run club? They had to go to the bloody PFA for a loan to pay their players wages before their usual luck kicked in with the Grimes sale...now yet another bit of luck.

I appreciate everything they did during the early part of this season but jesus christ they're jammy bastards,

Gloomy Gull wrote: I see no problem with that proposal OR the conditions applied to it, except the final comment "now or in the future" - looks like that ship has sailed!

He's been at our last two games, including in the directors box for at least one of them. It's fair to say that the ship hasn't sailed and indeed if he was in the directors box, something is going on at the very least.

brucie wrote:He has allegedly been at our last two home games and according to one of the other sites his car was seen at the Braintree away game. Whether this means anything or not who knows.
The options appear to be as follows:

1. Get bought out by a bloke with money (such as Smurthwaite) who it was rumoured was going to buy us out earlier in the season, Invest 1 million in the team and install Micky Adams as manager. On the other hand he may turn out to be the devil in disguise and clean us out.

2. Continue with the current owners who are well intentioned, but completely clueless with regard to running a football club and are completely financially hamstrung. We continue with a useless management duo - lose every other game between now and the end of the season and get relegated by the end of January.

I am not saying there is any other option (other than option 2) - but if there is we have to take it surely.

It's pretty likely we'll get relegated even if Smurthwaithe takes over, it'd have to be some great escape to pull our way out of the relegation zone and there is very little quality in the team. He might be aware of this though and is prepared to fund a season overspending in Conference South to get back to the top league...or he might be expecting the relegation to help kill off the club and give him his window of opportunity. Who knows.

ferrarilover wrote: I have a fat chocolate Labrador and she knows more about the club than you. When CH took over, we were about as far from a proper football club as it is possible to be without, technically, being a blancmange.

Matt.

We were far more of a club than we are today. Pissing away money under Thea's ownership does not make it any less true. A well run club? far from it but Hargreaves getting us relegated massively hastened our downward spiral.

IanGull01 wrote:Due to the club moving the game to the Sunday and prices reduced, do you not think the club should be contacting BBC Sport, Sky etc to promote the game and give a nationwide appeal to the Football fans in the UK that we need them in our hour of need to generate more people through the turnstiles.

I would have thought this was a perfect chance and something that can only benefit us if it comes off.

In the words of Delia - WHERE ARE YOU!!!!

The BBC and Sky couldn't give a toss about our small little club unfortunately.

frenchgull wrote:anyone think we missed a trick by not playing Chesham on Friday night? Maybe we asked and we're declined but we would not know that as nobody tells us anything,but they are part time and traveling down to Devon would have been a triffle inconvient.Now they have the luxury of taking their time to saunter down and playing on Sunday afternoon all for the sake of a few more paying customers against winning the tie,Just a thought.

Chesham would have had to agree to it, precisely to stop sneaky tricks like this.

ferrarilover wrote:In fairness to the man, we aren't a proper football club, so it's tough to blame a proper football man when he's not really equipped for the job.

Matt.

We were when Hargreaves was first appointed. His poor managerial skills are one of the factors that attributed to our current downward spiral.

Jack wrote:Please don't assume that Kevin could work with Paul Sturrock (or any other out of work manager for that matter). There would need to be mutual respect between the two parties or otherwise it would be totally disruptive and worsen an already challenging position.
Kevin is an intelligent man and won't be working in isolation. He will have a network of football people to turn to for advice and I am sure he will be in regular contact with them already.

What network? We have sod all. John Milton's name was dropped but there's no money to work with even if he identifies players. None of the board members have any footballing experience, Kenny Veysey left, all the academy coaches left, Deano resigned, we didn't want to keep on John Ramshaw. The only person working with him is Robbie Herrera. None of the supposed 'contacts' that Nicholson mentioned when he got the job have given us any players, we're scraping around trying to get anyone we can into the club and failing fairly badly at that one.