Fans getting angry.....

[usagullmichigan]

You do seem likeable. Send me some flowers and I'll forgive you.

[AustrianAndyGull]

What to America! It'd cost me an arm and a leg! :~D

No! :na:

[usagullmichigan]

What to America! It'd cost me an arm and a leg! :~D

No! :na:

Send them to brucie. He will appreciate them I'm sure.

[AustrianAndyGull]

So would my mum tomorrow but she isn't getting any.

(She would much prefer fags and a night at the GALA bingo i reckon :no: )

[Dave Caldwell]

Look, I agree that it's a cushty life in many ways, but mainly at a higher level then League 2 usually. The supporters don't deserve anything except for the players to put in effort. We pay knowing full well we may lose. I didn't see a lack of effort today. I just saw a badly organised team, with players which don't fit a certain system, and some individual mistakes and nervousness which cost us the game.

But what we should never do as fans is make assumptions about players and their levels of desire based on what they earn. Each player will have his own set of circumstances. Maybe some have been careless with their money and now have debts to pay which they won't be able to if they drop down a division etc. We just don't know. It's not fair to bring money into this in my opinion.

I would sooner believe a book written by a footballer, which aims to anonymously provide an insight into what goes on in football, than to believe media-driven tosh conjured up by supporters who pretend to understand a game that they have never played. He's the first to criticise footballers and their lifestyles in many ways, but he's also the first to state how different things can be behind the scenes to what the fans see. It comes across as an honest appraisal, and it's a very good read.

To be honest when you cross the white line money does not enter your mind and fans only complain about wages when players under perform!
So the team is in a position where confidence is low and they are under performing, the manager also has not provided that inspiration needed at this critical time, he may be the right manager to build a team, but what we need right now is an inspirational motivator that can organise a team to perform to a level to stop the team being relegated, I know fans get frustrated as I do when I see results, but taking the frustration out on the team will not help, but also might I say the only people who will get the team out of this situation is Mr Knill and the current squad, its requires graft, spirit and fight, if Mr Knill cant install this in the team at the moment then he may have been the wrong choice at this stage of the teams demise. Only time will tell, but if I was Mr Knill I would be looking each player in the eye to see if their up for the fight, no time for passengers!

[Modgull]

I agree with Yellowsmiffy.

I am not a footballer but played competitive rugby for all my sporting life and can assure anyone who hasn't played competitively that you DO know when you've cocked up, you DO try and avoid cocking up again and it doesn't help when so-called supporters get personal.

Virtually everyone on this forum agrees when times are good that the crowd can make a positive difference - why can some not see that the opposite is equally true when the going gets tough.

Having said all that I am seething that the Club I have supported for the best part of 40 years is throwing away all the good work of the last five years - promotion back to the "promised land", redevelopment of one of the worst stands in the country, the development of fit-for-purpose training facilities, the re-establishment of a youth system and, for a short time at least, the notional title of top team in Devon.

[Kernowgull]

Rubbish, Ive played competitive football most of my life, and when someone shouts at me for making a mistake, it makes me determined to prove them wrong. I dont advocate shouting for each mistake but this season has been truely disgraceful. Yesterday I went to watch Plymouth Albion instead of Torquay. I guess people will criticise that but I cant enjoy watching that useless bunch of idiots anymore, and would get angry watching them.

[Modgull]

Rubbish, Ive played competitive football most of my life, and when someone shouts at me for making a mistake, it makes me determined to prove them wrong. I dont advocate shouting for each mistake but this season has been truely disgraceful. Yesterday I went to watch Plymouth Albion instead of Torquay. I guess people will criticise that but I cant enjoy watching that useless bunch of idiots anymore, and would get angry watching them.

So did you have hundreds of fans on the touchline all groaning and yelling everytime you made a mistake, and often when you didn't, like they have with Stevens, Bodin, Morris and now Oastler? I think not!

[brucie]

Yes - abusing the players at the end just doesn't help at all, the bloke who was getting annoyed was telling the the other one that he had the right to express his opinion which is understandable.
Its hard to actually put the frustration into words yesterday. I never even celebrated when Downes scored because I knew we wouldn't get a point.
This was a massive game for us but we never really looked in with a shout. We managed one half shot from Howe after our goal and that in itself speaks volumes about the peformance.
This was a team which was in the play offs last year after all.
Its no fluke where we are though - cup defeats,poor peformances, - as has been said on here several times Ling should probably have gone after the defeat By Wimbledon. It was painfully obvious that the squad was nowhere near good enough.
Instead its just been complacency from the board downwards.
Even under Bateson we would have had more action than we have had now.
The most appalling issue is that there are actually ten games left and we are still not in the bottom two.
Yet most people accept that we are already down - what a savage indictment on the board of directors that is.
Appointing a northern based manager seemed a big risk at the time and is turning into another catastrophic mistake.

[Dave]

Agreed Modgull, yes I have posted on here about Joe Oastler, yesterday his performance was about the worst single right back performance I have ever seen. But I did "not" once shout any abuse at him or any other player during the game and never would.

Something us fans surely must realise, after every mistake he made some shouted abuse at him, you could see him get more and more nervous as the game went on and made more and more mistakes, including one that lead to the attack for the first goal, and another that lead to the attack that resulted in a penalty.

Us fans simply have to understand shouting abuse at the player during the game will only help us into the conference, yes we pay our money and we do have the right to critise, however there is a time and a place, during the game is not thhe right time or the right place.

[Modgull]

Forever, agreed - you made the point so much better than I!

[Gulliball]

This year is different to the previous relegation battles we've been in over the years. Then, the fans knew the situation we were in and would support the team based on those expectations. "The Gulls are staying up" would be chanted before, during and after all games, even when we lost.

This time, we were hopeful of a play-off push, then disappointed when we fell away into midtable, and now in a very short space of time we are suddenly one position and one point off relegation out the football league, which even for the most pessimistic of fans wasn't a consideration until very recently. 1 point from 27 is such a bad run that our drop down the table has been much faster then normal for a side on a bad run.

In addition to this, we are just looking so poor at the moment. We don't look like scoring (only 3 times in the last 23 games have we scored more than once - 18 goals total in those 23 games) - and we conceed sloppy goals - giving us no chance in games. The results, performances and slide down the table have everyone worried and angry about why it has happened.

That is one of the key factors - we have had a few good years in succession, and despite losing three players we replaced two of them well enough. It is only Eunan O'Kane missing from the side that almost got promoted last year, and was in the top half until Christmas. Now we are sat 22nd in the league, could be bottom within days and have no idea where the next point is coming from. Bringing in players is proving difficult and we have to stop the rot right now. As CP Gull pointed out, the board, managers, players and fans may have got complacent that we were just on a bad run of games. It has gone on for too long now to be just that and we are within 10 games of falling outside the football league again.

[6667GULL]

Oh dear I have just realised that I have been a stereotypical football fan and a f***ing 'tard for the last 47 years supporting TUFC as I fully agree with EddUK12. I apologise to all those who know and love me as I am a bad person.

[hector]

This year is different to the previous relegation battles we've been in over the years. Then, the fans knew the situation we were in and would support the team based on those expectations. "The Gulls are staying up" would be chanted before, during and after all games, even when we lost.

This time, we were hopeful of a play-off push, then disappointed when we fell away into midtable, and now in a very short space of time we are suddenly one position and one point off relegation out the football league, which even for the most pessimistic of fans wasn't a consideration until very recently. 1 point from 27 is such a bad run that our drop down the table has been much faster then normal for a side on a bad run.

In addition to this, we are just looking so poor at the moment. We don't look like scoring (only 3 times in the last 23 games have we scored more than once - 18 goals total in those 23 games) - and we conceed sloppy goals - giving us no chance in games. The results, performances and slide down the table have everyone worried and angry about why it has happened.

That is one of the key factors - we have had a few good years in succession, and despite losing three players we replaced two of them well enough. It is only Eunan O'Kane missing from the side that almost got promoted last year, and was in the top half until Christmas. Now we are sat 22nd in the league, could be bottom within days and have no idea where the next point is coming from. Bringing in players is proving difficult and we have to stop the rot right now. As CP Gull pointed out, the board, managers, players and fans may have got complacent that we were just on a bad run of games. It has gone on for too long now to be just that and we are within 10 games of falling outside the football league again.

This is a very good post and I think you are right in the difference between this relegation battle and previous ones. The talk at the start of the season was aiming for automatic promotion and the play-offs as a safety net. I remember Darren Huckerby tweeting that Torquay were his favourites for the title, although I did tweet him back and say it was very unlikely, at the time I felt we ought not to be anything less than mid-table. So, whilst so many have seen this coming for months, it is still a shock to the system to 'almost sudden;y' be involved in a relegation battle. It is like Macclesfield last year, like Lincoln in 1987 who dropped like a stone to spare us...in fact the only time they had been bottom of the league that year was the final seconds of the season after Dobson equalised. So their run came even later than ours.

Our form over the last 21 games, suggests that we would only pick up another 6 or 7 points in ten games as a maximum. Taken over the last 10 games then we would be looking at another 5 points. So the most likely outcome for us is a points total lower than 45 points which is relegation. It is like we are one of those massive oil tankers that needs 11 miles or something to be able to brake and turn around...if you are running out of sea, you are going to run aground or sink. Sadly, we just do not have enough games to turn this around in terms of what even new players might bring to the equation.

[The Farmers Friend]

It is like Macclesfield last year, like Lincoln in 1987 who dropped like a stone to spare us...in fact the only time they had been bottom of the league that year was the final seconds of the season after Dobson equalised.

Barnet in 2001 as well. I vaguely recall they beat Blackpool 7-0 at some point in the new year that season. Fourth from bottom having never been lower going into that last game weren't they?

I think there have been others that have slid dramatically and gone out too, and that's what worries me - that there's a certain inevitability about this, the old 'turning a tanker' analogy.

I had no feelings either way about Alan Knill, although his comments about 'playing football' concerned me. We really needed a proven fire-fighter in the Ian Atkins mould, although finding such a manager is probably easier said than done.