Part Time

[MidDevon]

Incidentally Dover's keeper is a full time teacher in London....I heard an interview with him during their cup run saying he was happy to play football part time and build a career at the same time....sensible chap IMO

[royalgull]

It does distort the figures, true, but it shows what HE has had to work with and recruit with.

Bear in mind that he didn't sign any of the above, so he didn't get to agree the wages they are paid.

Not denying that but he COULD have played some of them, as ever with stats or figures they can be twisted to suit your own argument, our averae wage of this squad is not £375 and it will still be significantly higher than a lot of the teams in this league. I want Greavsie to succeed here I appreciate and understand that a lot of this team isn't his and is sapping our budget but there is absolutely no excuse, NONE for getting completely humiliated at home by Braintree and I expected more of an apology from the club/him/players to be honest.

[leetufc]

The figure is shocking on first viewing, but given the players 'in the first eleven' probably not so. Unfortunately for CH he was hampered this season with the number of high earners left on the books from the previous regime; Downes, Pearce, Tonge, Harding, Chappell, Cameron, Benyon, Hawley. I would imagine these probably make up a significant percentage of any budget he had.

However I would imagine that to be a self sustaining club we probably cannot afford much more than this per week on our average wage, even without the high earners and full squad (20 players?).

[MidDevon]

We have to get a bit of realism here. £375 a week is near on £20,000 a year. A lot of good points have been made above, but I would certainly think that is a fair wage for the "average" player on the pitch on Saturday, mainly those trying to get a professional career going at just about the lowest level still available to them.

Its still WAY ABOVE what most 20 and 21 year olds are earning in other industries and perhaps Chris Hargreaves needs to show a bit of humility here as £375 in Torbay for a lad in his twenties is a good wage.

"Average" can of course mean lots of things if you remember your school maths lessons.

[Rjc70]

Hargreaves has now qualified his remarks in WMN. As taxilady points out elsewhere, it's no doubt after someone has had a quiet word with him. Quite right that they ought to have, as well.
http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Har ... story.html

[Dave]

Someone trying to fix his clanger. http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Har ... story.html

[Dave]

Hargreaves has now qualified his remarks in WMN. As taxilady points out elsewhere, it's no doubt after someone has had a quiet word with him. Quite right that they ought to have, as well.
http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Har ... story.html

Looks like we posted it at the same time.

[Rjc70]

Looks like we posted it at the same time.

I agree with your post.

[Neal]

If you hadn't known, and you were at any of the games we have played against part time clubs you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.

And.... most of those part time clubs don't travel in fancy coaches OR stay over night, so all that is b*llocks! If the players want success enough they will do that bit extra. Take the Dover goalkeeper, gee a full time teacher and trains a few times a week, that's commitment.

[nickbrod]

Nobody has answered my question posted yesterday. What exactly are the differences between part-time and full-time in terms of training?

[PhilGull]

That's right. £375 average means £4125 total. Take out the five players that are earning a few hundred between them and the other 6 are on pretty standard wages for a club our size. He had the opportunity to pick a more expensive side, so this is his own doing.

It is slightly worrying though that the manager is obviously really feeling the pressure. The fans know the situation the club is in, as do the owners. 16th and with a chance of relegation in March is well under par for the budget he's working with. The pressure he's under has been growing as the results have been getting worse and worse. Six wins since September will put a manager under pressure, and he should acknowledge that he is responsible for his fair share of it.

I still think he should have another summer to make his mark on the team and improve where needed, but our under-performance this season cannot just be totally written off.

I understand why so many people are asking for this but the moment Hargreaves does say "oops, my bad" people are just going to jump on his back even more. He's in a lose-lose-lose situation. Ideally I would like to see him shut-up and let the results do the talking but even then if we went say 4 wins on the bounce with no words from the manager people would be complaining about a lack of communication.
Like I say, he really is in a lose-lose-lose situation.

[Gulliball]

He doesn't have to publically admit anything, but as the results have got worse the more he is making excuses in the media. They may be true, but there's no need for him to publically state our wage bill and make national headlines. The 'clarification' above, with no figures, would have been a pretty good media interview - he acknowledged that we have been under par in the last 6 months, with only a slightly defensive tone. The initial comments sounded like a manager under pressure trying to salvage his media reputation, which was worrying.

Hopefully we can pick up a few wins, relieve some pressure and start making plans for next season.

[Sunnysideup]

Someone trying to fix his clanger. http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Har ... story.html

We have under-achieved over the second half of the season. I did say that the wage situation was partly a reason for that, but I also said it wasn’t an excuse

Maybe you should stop trotting it out regularly as an excuse then Chris?

[Dave]

Nobody has answered my question posted yesterday. What exactly are the differences between part-time and full-time in terms of training?

Did you read the two links I posted ? They certainly give an insight to the difference, this is just in the main an opinion, stating the obvious the main difference is a full time footballer has one job, therefore attends training every day or as required to by the manager, a full time footballer can choose to stay on after training and do a gym session, go swimming, practise technical skills, or just go for a round of golf.

A part-time footballer, again obviously has two jobs, depending on the hours they work and how understanding their employers are depends on just how much training they complete in the week, many only get to train twice a week and there's only so much the coaching staff can in 4 hours of training, there was story when we played Nuneaton home at the start of the season, do not know if I could find it now, two Nuneaton players did a night shift prior to the game, finished work and jumped on the bus to come down to Torquay, just shows what the life of semi-pro can be like.

[Dave]

Agreed sunnysideup. The pressure to be fair has mounted on Chris Hargreaves, this season clearly hasn't gone how he would have wanted it to, there are two things against CH, one the attendance figures, had they held at the 2300 mark then there would have been less pressure on the football club and therefore less pressure on the manager.

The other thing against CH is entirely self made, speaking to a Torquay supporting mate a few days ago, I said I wish CH would do himself a huge favour and just stop talking. Every time someone says 'I'm not making excuses but' is clearly because they are making excuses , no manager can come out in public week after week and say sorry I got it wrong, he'd be rightly sacked.

What happened to the old, we as a team, that's manager coach's and players stand together and share the plaudits during the good times, when results are good, stand together and share the responsibility during the hard times, and that's where CH is falling down flat on his face big style, he's very good at pointing the finger at the players when results don't go our way, but hopeless at taking his share of the responsibility, after all he's trains them, man-manages them, he sets the team up.