TALKING POINTS

Chris Wade

@tufcchris

Chris discusses the NLS game

THE TUESDAY AFTER THE SATURDAY BEFORE

Goodness gracious me. How on earth have I got this to write? Where do you start trying to come up with something positive after that on Saturday, and ahead of a trip to a team that has beaten a Championship team away from home and the runaway National League South leaders in the last tend days? The last 48 hours after Saturday’s embarrassing 4-0 home defeat to St Albans have been full of rumour, recrimination, expectation and….. nothing. It was beyond my comprehension at 1700 on Saturday that there wouldn’t be a new manager in post for Tuesday. managers simply do not survive performances and results like that. But yet here we are, seemingly with the same management team in the dug out for a very difficult looking challenge. How can they turn the tide at this stage?

GIVE US A STRUCTURE

I am even boring myself saying this now, but how anybody can set up a team the way that we did on Saturday is incredible to me. When you are playing a team that play out from the back, pressing high is expected. Push them in and don’t let them out. But against St Albans, we had five players pressing from their goal kicks. FIVE. As soon as they broke the press, they were away and most of the time they were in. Players were travelling 50 or 60 yards with the ball, with half of our team behind them. It defied logical and belief. When you have been struggling, setting up a team to be strong, resolute and with a firm foundation has to be the way to go. It simply has to be. That has to change to have any chance on Tuesday.

THE LINE-UP

The one thing that has not changed this season is the continual changes of personnel and so called system. Dean Moxey and Will Jenkins-Davis missed out through suspension on Saturday and will be available again, and Jack Stobbs and Duane Ofori-Acheampong don’t seem to be too far away. Aaron Jarvis & Kevin Dawson? Who knows. Finlay Craske became the latest hamstring victim on Saturday and looks set for another spell on the sidelines. Whether it be bad luck, excessive training or a bit of both, the way that the same team has rarely been available is another factor for our wildly erratic form all season.

AUSTEN’S RETURN

The debut of returning Austen Booth was both encouraging and worrying at the same time. He has a nice touch, and played some decent balls down the channels. He is also a tall, strong boy and certainly has the attributes of a solid defender at this level. He also made me feel old, as his father John Gittens’s handball (I have just watched it again and it still isn’t handball 26 years later) in the 1998 play off final at Wembley is one of the most painful days as a Gulls fan. But he was also caught for both the first and third goals as he was two yards behind the other two centre backs. I also don’t envy anybody coming into the chaos of our club at the moment, but he will hopefully develop further.

THE STONES

To use the old chalk and cheese analogy, our opponents on Tuesday evening Maidstone United are riding the crest of a rather large and lucrative wave at the moment. Victory at Ipswich Town the other weekend has set up an FA Cup 5^th round tie at Coventry or Sheffield Wednesday, and they backed that up with three points at home to Yeovil on Saturday. So, a marvellous time to be visiting! Add to that our notoriously bad record on astro surfaces, and the room for optimism is extremely low. But we have to front this situation out. And right now.