TT MATCH VERDICT
Rachel Malloch – @RachelVillavox
TORQUAY UNITED 0-4 WOKING FC
MATCH SUMMARY
There’s an Irish proverb that says ‘you say it best when you say nothing at all’. However when asked to provide a match report and sadly without any psychic skills or prescience, I have well and truly been saddled with a stinker of a game and yet need to write some semblance of a report to sum up the 90+4 minutes that I and 2,400 others witnessed.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, but alas I just do not have the will to dissect what was in recent memory the worst Torquay United performance, certainly under Gary Johnson and dare I say it, I don’t recall such a dispirited, shapeless, inept shambles of a performance under his predecessor.
Torquay were 2 down after 4 minutes, keystone cops mix ups and nervy, uncertain goalkeeping before Chiori Johnson picked up his second booking of the half that saw him take an early shower. Harsh first yellow, second for a rash late challenge, this now familiar 10 men Torquay had to somehow raise themselves against a physical Woking.
Torquay really were that bad. They offered nothing to trouble the Woking keeper, a timid shot from Holman aside that was way off target. It was a first half to forget and I simply cannot offer any encouraging words or positives to it. Torquay were awful in every area of the pitch. Every attack from Woking looked dangerous and any attempt to play the ball was thwarted by dreadful misplaced balls and no ideas at all.
The second half saw the anonymous Lemonheigh-Evans make way for O’Connell. This made very little impact, one mazy run aside. Then Woking intercepted another misplaced pass and scored a 3rd. Further substitutions saw full back Dan Martin and Dan Holman replaced by Gabby Rogers and Klaudi Lolos but one nice run and shot that clipped the crossbar from Rogers aside, it was liked watching 9 perfect strangers and a shaky shell-shocked goalkeeper trying to imitate professional footballers. Harsh? I’m really trying to be as kind as I possibly can, but I’d fail every polygraph if I said there was anything good about this Torquay United performance. It was purgatory and then some. A one-on-one with the Woking keeper and Armani Little had to score. He didn’t.
Another misplaced pass, some scrambled desperate defending, the 90 minutes up on the clock and an inevitable (as that’s how it felt) 4th goal that was as simple as the possible 5, 6, 7 even 8 that Woking could have and 2 that they definitely should have scored.
If the Woking kit man/ball man who was out pre-match and half time looked like famous spiritualist medium Clinton Baptiste resplendent with a blonde mullet, then as we traipsed out of the ground on full time, spirits had faded long before the ref blew to put us out of our misery.
PLAYER RATINGS
Halstead 2 – Shaky, nervous, indecisive, at fault for 2 of the goals, perhaps the 4th too. No confidence at all.
Wynter 3 – Got caught out of position and pace too often.
Moxey 4 – But for some last-ditch tackles, could have been a cricket score.
Lewis 3 – No communication or understanding with Moxey and the defence were like strangers.
Martin 3 – Caught out of position and pace too often.
Lemon 2 – Anonymous.
Hall 4 – Probably our best player but no-one player deserving of a man of the match award.
Wright 3 – Very, very poor.
Holman 3 – Ran around a lot. did very little.
Johnson 2 – 1st yellow harsh, the 2nd naive of him to go in late when already on a caution.
Little 2 – Very nearly a 1 but he did find a Torquay player once with a pass in the 2nd half. Someone really needed to remind him he no longer plays for Woking. WE ARE THE TEAM IN YELLOW ARMANI!
Subs:
O’Connell 2 – Made no impact.
Rogers 3 – Tried to move the ball around and a great shot that hit the bar.
Lolos 2 – Made no impact.
Do you agree with Rachel’s ratings? Vote here
THE OFFICIALS
Referee was pretty rubbish but let’s not fudge this, as questionable as some of his petty decisions were, Torquay warranted and deserved nothing from this game.
THE OPPOSITION
Woking FC won’t have an easier 3 points. We made them look like prime Brazil. Playing hoof-ball and lofted free kicks to 4 henchmen in defence, they’ll take that all afternoon.
TACTICS
A 4-4-2 much like Saturday, with Martin taking up the left back role and Moxey moving into the centre again, whilst Hall took the central midfield role from Lapslie and CLE was mainly based on the left hand side instead of O’Connell.
CONCLUSION
A truly dreadful football performance from Torquay United. I’m not sure how or where Gary Johnson and Aaron Downes go from here but they have got their work cut out and will need to dip into the loans market to strengthen this squad, quickly.
COYY – Rachel
SOCIAL MEDIA
OTHER ARTICLES:
THE GULLS WEEK 30TH AUG – 5TH SEPT by Danny Burnell
NEW AT THE TT SHOP…
TORQUAYTALK 
Having seen Notts highlights of just a few minutes there were more positive moves by us than in the entire match against Woking.
It really was our “boys” against Wokings “men”( it really pains me to say that)
Of course the sending off affected us especially with the effort put in by The Saturday Ten already ,but this defeat ,which could easily have been by six or seven goals,
will be hard to put behind us.
We need a couple of experienced pros now to boost the ranks, speedy striker and solid defender as a minimum.
I don’t agree with the comments on Halstead,were you at a different match?
My main fear is that the finance we need to compete is not available and may not be in future.
LikeLike