TALKING POINTS

Matty Hayward

@MattyHayward96

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Well, that was about as fun as my last funeral. At least then, as I sat in my pew, there was an air of faith around the place, it seemed like the bloke in charge knew what he was doing, and I didn’t have to be consistently reminded about the existence of Brett f##king McGavin (as I believe he has now been christened). If you’ve clicked on the link to open and read this article, well done, thank you. I can tell you now, there’s no way I’d want to consume more Torquay United content this week, nor would I want to relive a moment of the omni-shambles that took place at Plainmoor on Saturday. If you bail out at any point, you will be forgiven.

I’M NO EXPERT BUT…

I make a point, generally, of not telling people how to do their jobs (unless they’re referees or assistants), and I’m certain that I have less expertise in the field of tactics than multiple-title-winning manager Gary Johnson. But I do wonder, particularly as literally everyone in the postcode could’ve spotted it, whether I may have a point on this…

My understanding is that a 3-5-2 formation tends to mean that the middle of the park will be crowded, because you’re essentially playing 8 of your 10 outfield players in that area. This tends to require midfielders who have decent legs, and are good technicians, because they’re likely to have less time on the ball than in a wider, more stretched system. By my reckoning, we played seven different people in central midfield yesterday: Hall, Jenkins Davies, McGavin (all starters), Donnellan (shuffled in there for 20 mins after half time, replacing WJD, who looked miles out of his depth), Hanson (replacing a lost-looking McGavin), Collins (briefly at the end when all hope was lost), Moxey (after he’d made his knee injury worse and literally couldn’t run). I think it’s fair to say that none of those players are either technicians, or particularly mobile, though Jenkins-Davies will argue he ran about a bit. I know we’re two down (already, already!) to injury, but it seems to me an absolute travesty that we’ve spent a year watching Brett McGavin in the middle of the park and decided to start the season with him there again.

I find it hard to believe, though, that those players should be outplayed by Worthing’s. Lest we forget, this is a team that contained Ricky Aguiar and Joe Felix: two footballers who were rightly deemed inadequate for one of the worst Torquay squads you or I have ever seen, two footballers who we made look absolutely superb. Stobbs, Hall, Jarvis, Ash, Collins are players who are good enough for the National League. I’m afraid, that those players have been made to look so inept, is evidence not that they are bad footballers, but that they were set up wrongly. That’s something that the manager needs to change immediately, if he’s fortunate enough to retain his job until Tuesday.

GENUINE SYMPATHY

On McGavin, though, I’ve got genuine sympathy for him. It’s not his fault that he’s not up to the requisite standard; it’s not his fault that in him Johnson has seen a world-beating midfielder and not, like, a Sunday league one; it’s not his fault that he can’t tell a yellow shirt from a red one. It feels genuinely cruel, now, to send him out to play every week. The crowd are – completely understandably, I’m one of them! – on his back from the first mistake to the last, and he must feel some level guilt that he’s failing on such a consistent basis. I’m sure he doesn’t want it to be like that, nor does he love reading match reports from people like me telling him how bad he is.

I also feel genuine sympathy for Mark Halstead, to whom we owe an enormous debt. He made three of four very good saves yesterday, including one where Worthing literally had three men queuing up to put one past him, and only a hapless Ollie Tomlinson and a stoic Halstead stood between them. If I were him, I’d have upped and left in the summer. (CAN YOU IMAGINE SAYING THAT AT THE START OF LAST SEASON?! MARK HALSTEAD IS FAR TOO GOOD FOR US?! MARK…HALSTEAD…!!). The same goes for Jarvis, who fed off rank long balls all day, and never gave up. If he was on the phone to his agent tonight, though it’d devastate me, I wouldn’t blame him.

WHAT’S THE OPPOSITE OF SCAPEGOAT?

That question is a sincere semantic one. A scapegoat is someone who is (often wrongly) blamed for everything: it’s the exiled Trotsky in Stalin’s Soviet Union, it’s Marius van der Lubbe after the Reichstag fire, it’s Courtney Richards most times he played for Torquay. Dillon De Silva is very quickly taking the opposite role: it’s his absence that is blamed for the Yellows’ ills, and I’m not really sure why. I think he’s a good young footballer, and I am in favour of his signing. But blimey, if he’s as good as some on the Popside think he is, the Sri Lankan national team are going to launch a serious challenge on the 2026 World Cup.

I remember well, last time we were in this hellhole of a division, Ruairi Keating took that role. As a means of moaning about Gary Owers’ reign of terror, the home fans sung Ruairi’s name all game, until he was finally brought on late into the second half (and, lo and behold, not much improved). The point I’m labouring towards is this: one popular player being brought on really isn’t going to alter the course of our season, and it’s certainly not going to sway a game in which we’ve been outplayed, particularly if that change doesn’t necessitate a switch in formation or strategy. De Silva is a good player and will make us a better team this season, but he’s not a football genius, and it feels unhelpful to bray for his introduction when clearly the problems run far deeper.

THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER?

Nope, sorry D:REAM, sorry Brian Cox, sorry New Labour, that isn’t going to wash in this case. There are plenty of eventualities in which things do not, in fact, get better. Actually, I think it’s quite likely that before they get better, things will get significantly worse. We’re twentieth in a league of twenty-four…

There’s something very daunting and foreboding about Tuesday’s fixture against Chippenham. It’s a book I’ve read before. Asa will struggle to play twice in four days, Moxey will surely be out (he was injured when he came on, then – predictably – made his injury far worse!), Craske limped off, Lapslie will take another of his annual 30 games off, Dawson is nowhere near (we’ve played two games, by the way), confidence will be shot, we’ll play the same formation, Halstead might not have another rabbit to pull out of his hat, we won’t have signed anyone, we’ll have the same manager – I find it hard to see how or why we’d beat a well-organised side who have won two in two.

ELEPHANTS

The elephant in the room here, of course, is Gary Johnson. We can and should hold the absent chairman to account, but there has to come a point where you ask questions of the manager. We’ve been relegated, we’ve made rafts of terrible signings (among some good ones, of course!), we’ve been inept in our first two games, we’re not set up right, the squad looks bare already, none of the players appear to be improving. Who’s to blame for all of those problems? Where does the buck stop? How long can one cling onto past glories and previous ‘good times’ before their P45 is served? I don’t think it’s unreasonable or overly reactive to be asking these questions. It’s an abomination that our football club is playing at this level (again!), it can’t be allowed to languish here.

COYY – MATT

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