Attitudes to the new reality.........

[Alpine Joe]

Royalgull

I wasn't overly happy with Atieno being replaced by Jarvis.

Judged on what we've seen this season I'd prefer it if we had Atieno available to bring on, partly because he could often hold the ball up reasonably well if he found himself isolated up front. The reality of the situation as we all know though, is that we're a small club, not getting much in the way of income, we try to survive with a small squad, and we need everyone available to do their bit if called upon. McKenzie, Leadbitter, Rice,Thomson, Macklin have been thrown on now and again, and for the most part acquitted themselves well.

With a small squad, particularly if there are a few injuries, we need those fringe players to be available and ready to play. It's no good Rene being suspended or injured for a week and Lingy looking around for Atieno only to be told he's flown off to to Kenya to prepare for some friendly match. So he misses the weekend game, the Tuesday night match, and is totally jet lagged when he gets back at the end of the week when you want him to prepare for that weekends game. Having any player on your books is money down the drain if he's sunning himself in Kenya rather than spending a winters afternoon with the Gulls in Oxford.

Last Saturday I'm not sure it was worth changing the formation for one player. Given that we expected to be defending more than attacking, stick with the system we know, get Jarvis to make a nuisance of hmself as best he can and hope to nick the points with a Nicholson free kick or a Saah or Downes header from a corner.

If Rene had got a kick on the knee and was going to be out for a month then I'd agree we'd need to re-jig the formation if we intended playing Jarvis and wanted to get the best out of him. After being released from Walsall there was no guarantee that Jarvis would find another Club at football league level. He's probably grateful that we've given him the chance, and won't be costing us a fortune in wages. The sole man up front role doesn't suit him, and because Rene has done so exceptionally well this Season it's asking a lot of anyone to replace him.

Royalgull

Mansell having the season of his life and getting 11/12 goals. That is about his entire career's worth combined in one year. It was a freak to tell the truth,

Freaky indeed haha. Manse in all probability won't score that many again this season,but we should remember that Lathrope got injured in our very first home match of the season, and Manse has had to compensate by giving a lot more thought to the defensive side of his game for a big part of the season so far. The loss of Morris only added to this as his defensive covering and discipline was excellent even if he wasn't the fleet-footed attacking force we'd hoped for.

Manse still gets from box to box, puts in an all action 90 minutes, and gives the opposing midfielders an uncomfortable time. He probably won't be able to add a shed load of goals again this season but he's still the main cog in our midfield engine room. What was really, really freaky was the thinking of a previous Manager that such a player would be best utilised as a full back !!


We have lost a great deal of quality players over recent years. Not just the Buckle exodus with a number following him to Bristol, but Nicky Wroe who has proved himself good enough for a higher league, our player of the season Guy Branston leaving at the same time as the Buckle group.

And from last season we've seen Olejnik, Robertson, O'Kane, Ellis leave to play at a higher level. Ling brings in another bunch of casts offs for next to nothing ( plus an old lady helping us buy a 20 year old) to take their places and miraculously get's us into the play off positions. It's a young squad, and not a group of players who have been playing as a settled team for a few seasons. Given a bit of time and Lingy's coaching we should be fine, but it's still understandable that fans who attend mostly away games are frustrated at not being able to enjoy the number of goals and the enjoyable attacking play that, for the most part, I've been lucky enough to see at Plainmoor this season.

[ferrarilover]

O.K OLD FART WARNING !!

I know this is the age of the internet ,twitter etc BUT it really pisses me off big time when everybody these days expects this club to somehow perform like fecking Barcelona every bloody game

Not even close to true. All I ask, and all I believe any rational member may ask, is that we perform to the level of which the players are capable. I have seen that very team play some teams off the park, and no mug teams either, Gillingham and Cheltenham among them. However, I have also seen them get thoroughly embarrassed by Wycombe Wanderers among others. We can all accept that the boys won't be at 100% every week, and that sometimes we'll be a bit useless, but the disparity between the levels of good and poor performances, and the regularity with which these poor performances occur, is distressing to me.

and has a go as to why we did not perform.

Warning, this forum may contain opinions which do not align precisely with your own. The raison d'être of this forum (as all others) is for people to air, freely, their views and opinions. If this is somehow distressing to you, it is perhaps pertinent to mention that you are not bound, by any Act of Parliament of which I am aware, to visit this or any other website.

Everybody now has the opportunity to ultra criticise every fecking thing this club does or doesn't do. Every player is under ultra scrutiny. Why didn't he do this why didn't he do that. Its so irrational & boring BUT look at the situation we are in. Crowds (?) of 2000 and we are expected to produce teams of quality and style.

See above for the first half.
On crowds not wildly dissimilar to this over the last couple of years, we have played entertaining football and have faced, in my opinion, considerably more talented opposition, yet we have looked more capable. I fail to see why crowds could possibly be blamed for this year's downturn in performances, especially given the large sums we generated in the transfer market, which we have not done in previous years.

We are so poor in comparison to even our neighbours Exeter who have gates of over 5000 and dare I say our Cornish "friends" who have at least 6500 who turn up to watch that crap. We on the other hand have to make do with half that or less (1800 FA Cup )but Mr Ling & the board are expected to produce a team of world beaters ?? !!!

Again, no, not world beaters, just extremely poor Wycombe, Barnet, Harrogate etc beaters. We managed it last year, why, suddenly, are we not managing it this year? We have been so desperately awful in so many matches this season that it cannot simply be the case that the players who have departed have been replaced with such inferior men as to cause this.

PLEASE get fecking real and realise what we follow. A team that is situated in the backwaters of the country A place where hardly a fecker in the bay even cares about the club but we are somehow competing and dare I say over achieving on what we have.
Yes I understand that people can get pissed off if the team doesn't do this or that BUT please just be bloody happy at we ARE doing !!

Nobody gave a toss in the last 5 years, we made the playoffs 4 times and the FA Trophy final once, as well as the third round of the FA Cup three times and the fourth round once (I'm guessing at the FA Cup stats, but if they're wrong, they're not far wrong), what's changed suddenly?
We've been lower than we are now (divisionally) just once in over 100 years, and that was our two years in the Conference following you-know-who. To suggest that being in the division where we have spent 95% of our time in existence is overachieving is, well, bemusing to me.
I am upset with the present level of performance, as I've explained already, because I know we are capable of so much better. I am happy for us to be in 8th place, but that merely demonstrates the real lack of quality in the division this year.

Years ago the only contact we had with the club was the report in the Herald Express. These days everything in analysed to the enth degree whereas in the past it would be accepted. Do we expect too much in this day & age ? I personally think so.

For the nth time in this reply, all I expect, and all that any balanced poster expects, is that the chaps perform somewhere near their level, almost every game. We haven't even come close to doing that this season and something must be causing that. Part of the role of the managerial team (and, to a lesser extent, the players themselves) is to diagnose the cause of the drop in levels and take action to rectify the situation. Merely accepting things really isn't good for anybody. The club will never progress as a football team or a business if we just accept the way things are and be grateful. The teams all around us certainly will continue to move forward and we will actually regress comparatively. This type of approach will see the club dead within a handful of years.
No one is stopping you from withdrawing from this hustle and bustle and merely reading about the club, once a week, in the HE, you are here and elsewhere voluntarily.

It may be the way of the world these days BUT before everybody goes loopy and types responses on the forums please people just pause for a second or two before launching into a tirade of abuse. It may stifle debate BUT I hope it may mean some logical sense is stated rather than a load of ill thought through clap trap that is normally posted !!

It is, of course, your prerogative to disagree with a lot of what is posted here and elsewhere, but if it makes you so upset, withdraw yourself from it, or make constructive argument against it. Whinging about it and asking people to merely align themselves with you or to take a positive slant on everything really isn't going to work (but you are, of course, free to continue to try). I disagree with some of what is written on here, and often I will say so and equally as often I will divide opinion between those who agree with me and those who agree with 'the other guy', but that is the very essence of debate and the lifeblood of a forum. By and large, people on here (certainly by comparison to other, closely related forum) are well balanced and have a decent sense of perspective.
Yes, some of our number are here on the wind up, and they do an exceptional job of it (Brucie, of course, is the King of the jungle here). Some throw their toys out of the pram at the slightest invite (*cough* Andy *cough*) and some will occasionally take an anti-establishment line to either spark some debate, or genuinely because they have a different point of view to the masses (that handsome devil Ferrarilover is an excellent exponent of this style).

Personally, I love this place because everyone (you and I included) is allowed to speak, with equal voice, on any subject from the last match right down to an argument as to which is preferable, cats or tables. This place is almost perfect democracy in action. I close with the pertinent words most often attributed to Voltaire, although not to be found anywhere in his writings:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Matt.

[royalgull]

Manse was only played at full back because our centre midfield options under Buckle were stronger and unlike Ling he only played 2 of them. We had the likes of Hargreaves, Wroe, O'Kane, Lathrope, Oastler for the most part plus a little bit of Hockers and Thompson who were both steady in the Conference. Manse was better but by then he was doing a pretty good job at RB.

I like Mansell, but we've got too many of his type of players in our midfield. Mansell is predominantly a defensive midfielder, he's at his best breaking stuff up, competing, all action style. he'll pop up and get the odd goal as well. Easton is a much worse version of that and Lathrope is that without the goals. There is no spark in there, there is no Wroe or O'Kane in there to offer a bit of quality on the football. No one to produce a goal out of nothing or pick a pass. I thought Craig was poor saturday, out of position maybe but he didn't strike me as that real playmaker. More a dead ball specialist/good crosser maybe a good passer. More a David Beckham style player than a playmaker like Wroe and O'Kane both are. it's that type of player we desperately lack especially with this formation where it's imperitive to get bodies forward to try and support Rene.

[ferrarilover]

While I appreciate that we live in the here and now, I'm going to leap to the defence of NC here and mention that he's a mere child and has a dozen games under his belt. That 'something from nothing' trait will develop.

Matt.

[kingsgull]

I'm missing Morris.

[Alpine Joe]

Royalgull

There is no spark in there, there is no Wroe or O'Kane in there to offer a bit of quality on the football. No one to produce a goal out of nothing or pick a pass.

I think most would agree with that. I'm sure Lingy would have liked to have kept O'Kane, or failing that, replaced him with an exact replica. The closest we've been able to find so far is Nathan Craig who is still finding his feet, but as you say doesn't yet offer the variety that an on form O'Kane did to the general play of the team.

Easton, Mansell, Cruise, Lathrope, even Morris to some extent are out of a similar mold, and if we acknowledge that they may not be able to provide the killer through balls to the forwards that Eunan could we should then also recognise that the large number of chances and goals that we've seen in the home games are down to Rene and Billy creating those openings either between them or individually. It's an old adage that you've got far bigger problems when you're aren't creating the chances in the first place rather than when you're missing them. At home we've missed a hatful of chances but also scored a hatful compared to most teams in the division.

So does Ling change the system, or does he sign on loan a new forward who can both create chances and stick them away ( why isn't this guy in his own clubs first team if he can do this ? ) or do we look for more creativity elsewhere ? You can watch the majority of the home games, or the game at Barnet on Tuesday night and conclude that while we're not perfect we create a good number of chances, but sometimes struggle to convert them into goals. You can go to Oxford and draw the conclusion that the team barely knows where the goal is.

Rather than a change of personnel, getting some consistency into our play would be more useful. Even with our midfield of artisans rather than artists we are capable of playing really good football and scoring goals at Plainmoor. A little more of that slick football with the occasional goal thrown in during our away matches would certainly get one particular critic off Lingy's back , and in the meantime if we are lucky enough to find ourselves another Eunan to bring a bit more of the unexpected to midfield, then so much the better.

[kingsgull]

re: O'kane....think Nathan will need 12 months to settle in first before he will be more like O'kane....o'kane did not set the world alight in his first season but was brilliant in his second season...
made me chuckle everytime nathan takes a corner all of us at the popside keep shouting "shoot shoot" ......

[royalgull]

Not writing Craig off or saying he's poor or anything like that. Just first impressions, he didn't strike me as one of those types that want the ball all the time who drives forward and looks to pick passes. He strikes me as an old fashioned wide player to an extent, get it, little trick, cross it. His delivery is good already and will improve.

He might develop as he is still young and more to the point inexperienced but if we feel he's best in the middle then he should be in the middle now, always. Drop Easton and give Thompson some game time.

[Chris B]

He might develop as he is still young and more to the point inexperienced but if we feel he's best in the middle then he should be in the middle now, always.

I definitely feel Nathan is our best central midfielder, certainly in possession, and I am really frustrated Ling keeps shoving him over to the wing. Being impressed by a young player's versatility is great, but making him a focal point in the position he plays best in is surely preferable.

For me, with all options available, our midfield should be Bodin-Lathrope-Craig-Mansell-Stevens. When in-form, Danny and Billy are big threats, and more than capable of getting 20+ goals a season between them. Damon and Manse should do the defensive, pressing roles they thrive in, and Craig should be given the freedom to get on the ball as much as possible.

I maintain he's at his best picking the ball up from the defence and dictating the play, spraying passes left and right (as against Argyle), but if he finds himself out wide he'll deliver a great cross, and he has a pretty dangerous long-shot when in a more advanced central role.

That said, in the absence of a fit Stevens and in-form Bodin, and with one striker fit-for-purpose (Ling's system), we really should be looking for a short-term attacking option. I completely agree with you and Alpine Joe that Atieno was a far better option than Jarvis in the 4-5-1 we persistently favour.