Don't get me wrong, I AM a big fan of Alan Knill and I like a lot of what he has to say, but I do wonder whether he has gone about things in the wrong way.
To get to the point, what I am concerned about is the "type" of players that Knill is trying to recruit. Traditionally, the " hunting grounds" for bringing new players to Torquay has largely been the South/ South West, South East and Midlands.
Now we don't know (apart from Roadrunner perhaps
)too much as to who Knill is talking too but the players we are being linked with, suggest that he is looking at the North/North West with the likes of Tonge, Robertson, Nsiala and Mozika all traditionally based up there. Most of the other "names" we are supposed to be looking at (may of course be pure guesswork) also seem to be coming from that area too. Now, in many ways, it is perfectly understandable for Knill to be looking at players he is familiar with first and foremost and given that all of his Managerial experience up until now has been in the North then what I am suggesting may be happening is not really that surprising, but it really is a long old way from the North of England to our south western outpost and much as we love it, it is certainly not every young mans cup of Tetley's!
My first concerns over his transfer recruitment policy was when we were in desperate need of additions in the run in last season. We kept hearing talk of him bringing in young strikers from the Academies of Man U, Liverpool, Everton etc, ultimately though we didn't succeed in bringing anyone in from those sources and the only players we did were Labadie (Nottingham) and Chapell (Sheffield).
By way of a different approach, I must mention John Sheridan down at Argyle, someone else who has been based in the North of England for much of his career. I recall him going on record as saying how difficult he had found it to recruit players down to Plymouth when he first got there, but ultimately he succeeded and brought some quality players in which were probably the only reason Argyle stayed up in the end. But look where he got his players from ... Branno (lives in the Bay), Charles (ex Aldershot), Banton (Crystal Palace), Bryan (Bristol City) and Reid (Yeovil).
Sheridan has continued to build in the summer with the likes of McCormick (ex Plymouth), Blizzard (Yeovil) while Reid (Yeovil) has returned and there is plenty of talk of the imminent return of Banton (Palace) too. He has still gone back for an "old boy" of his from the North (Allessandra) but other than that his recruitment targets have all come form the South/South West.
Given the massive (by our standards) number of players that have left us over the summer, it is vitally Important that Alan Knill gets this right and he must look at targets that are realistic both in terms of experience (are they prepared to play in L2) wages (can we afford to pay them what they want) and location ( are they going to uproot to the South West). I don't doubt for one minute he has been working extremely hard but I really hope it hasn't all been a fruitless exercise, because if it has been then we are really up against it now.
I know the season start is over a month away, but Knill himself has said that ideally you would want your squad in place by the start of pre season, that (as the man himself has said) is clearly not going to happen now and it seems at a time when ideally in the first two or three weeks of the return to training he should be working with the new squad he will still be spending most of his time trying to recruit the 7,8 or 9 players needed to complete our squad. As for sending them off to the Marine camp next week to " bond" like we did last season it would normally be a great idea, but in reality we may well only have a dozen or so guys in attendance all of whom know each other and have already bonded with each other last season, together with maybe a few trialists (if indeed the invitation extends to them) who may or may not have a future at TUFC.
No need for panic, like I say, but I am genuinely concerned, as something doesn't seem quite right to me.
