TT REVIEW

Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

Clive reports back from Plainmoor

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TORQUAY UNITED 0-5 CHELMSFORD CITY – 28.02.2026

SUMMARY

Eighteen days ago, on February 10th, Torquay United travelled to bottom club Chippenham in the aftermath of a glorious win at Hornchurch which had seen the Gulls supplant the Urchins as league leaders. A shock defeat in Wiltshire was the precursor to a rapid fall from grace that leaves Torquay’s long-suffering fans stunned and the manager’s job surely hanging by a thread that many expect to see cut tonight (Saturday).

Big spending, underachieving Chelmsford City arrived at Plainmoor with a point to prove after United had lowered their colours at their athletics track in November.

Where to start?

Let’s do the goals. Get them out of the way.

After an even first 7 minutes, United failed to clear properly and the ball sat up beautifully for Charlee Adams to smash home a long-range opener. Without seeing a replay I can’t say whether Hamon should have stopped it, but as we know he’s not great from long range- 0-1.

Chelmsford were now first to everything. Quicker of thought and deed. They won the midfield battle and Hamon was horribly exposed as Murphy slid in to double their lead on 38 minutes 0-2

Despite a bright start to the second half, Chelmsford didn’t buckle and on 62 minutes Lyle Taylor administered the coup de grace. Sundire failed to deal with a bouncing ball, Hamon was slow to appreciate the danger and the ex-Charlton frontman produced a quality lob from distance- 0-3

I can’t remember the build-up to number four, but Barbrook found himself with plenty of time and space to bang in a rebound with 4 minutes of normal time remaining- 0-4

No mercy was shown, and United failed to deal with a corner in the dying seconds of injury time. Many fans had already left the ground as substitute Tompkins headed in unopposed at the far post- 0-5

The game was, in the final analysis, as one-sided as the scoreline suggests. A former club official, a man whose glass is normally half full, described the performance as “abject” when we commiserated with each other on the way out.

This team, I am very sorry to say, is no longer playing for its manager. Injuries have taken a savage toll, but other than a couple of early shots from the unfortunate Dylan Morgan we threatened little and were there for the taking.

PLAYER RATINGS

1.  HAMON – 5: Two good saves near the end but following his awful kicking errors at Eastbourne and Worthing you can see that his defence doesn’t trust him. Possibly at fault for the first goal and should have done so much better for the third.

26. THOMAS – 4: Out of position. Many full backs can play on the opposite flank, but we already knew Jordan is a fish out of water on the left. But we played him there anyway, and then hooked him at half time.

3. FOULSTON – 5.5: Filled in at centre back and it could have been a lot worse.

16. PALMER- 5: Tried hard. Never gave up. Not good enough to lead the backline though.

6. SUNDIRE – 5: An afternoon to forget. Put himself about but Chelmsford gave as good as they got and he isn’t a defender on this evidence.

20. HAYFIELD- 5.5: Nothing of note. Recovered from his midweek illness to play in place of a stricken Matt Worthington, who is the poster boy of this season’s underachievement so far. At least Dan gets the most out of his ability: and that’s all you can ask.

11. MORGAN – 6: Was our best attacking threat in the first half, despite getting earache from the touchline. Didn’t survive the half time hairdryer.

24. LO-EVERTON – 6.5: Showed his ability to keep going. Kept making runs and wanting the ball.

8. YOUNG – 5: Having only just recovered from a nasty foot injury, he made little impact on his return to the side

7. DENNIS – 5.5: Occasional moments of class, but easy to knock off the ball and contributed little on a day when we needed our senior pros.

9. COOKE – 5.5: Battled hard but got no change from rugged centre backs and departed the fray nursing a dislocated shoulder

Subs

23. WILSON – 5.5: See Matt Jay. The keeper saved well with his feet, and Kieran was unable to produce much after that brief chimera.

28. TIZZARD – 6: Our latest borrowed centre back looks alright. He’s been in and out of Sutton’s team this year. They have struggled one league above ours, so we clearly haven’t signed the new Nico Lawrence. He’s tall and aggressive though and enjoys carrying the ball forward. I believe he only arrived in Torquay on Saturday morning, but the decision not to start him came back to haunt us.

27. JAY – 5.5: Put Wilson through with a neat through ball soon after his introduction. The keeper saved well with his feet and after that we saw little of note.

17. FISH – unused. Probably quite telling?

21. SEEDHOUSE-EVANS (GK) – unused. I would be tempted to give him a chance on Tuesday against relegation-threatened Farnborough.

PLAYER OF THE MATCH – SONNY BLU LO-EVERTON

Sonny-Blu Lo-Everton. At the moment, it is invariably him. He is a better footballer than Tom Lapslie and, I think, Charlie Oatway, but what Sonny shares with those other diminutive midfielders is an ability to keep going when all around him is turning to ash and teammates are wishing they were somewhere else.

TACTICS

Paul Wotton managed to send his team out in the normal 4-2-3-1 formation by playing our right back (Thomas) on the left, putting a midfielder (Sundire) into left back and moving a left back (Foulston) in to centre back. It was a makeshift defence which saw yesterday’s loan signing Tizzard spend the first half on the bench watching the arse drop out of his new club’s season.

Three half time substitutions changed the shape, possibly to 3-4-3. Tizzard, Jay and Wilson all started well and we had a good 10 minutes, but the gravitational pull was too strong and by the final whistle they all looked as hapless as their colleagues.

THE OPPOSITION

Organised. Up for it. Good on the break. Combative.

Everything we weren’t. Chelmsford have underachieved this season. Their mercenary striker Lyle Taylor took a break from chatting on the radio to Aaron Paul, turned up and put on a good display of aggression, flair and “nous”.

THE OFFICIALS

There’s no point blaming the referee today, but he wasn’t very good. The Chelmsford manager saw yellow in the first half after the officials missed a shirt pull on the right hand side. The ensuing run could have put them three up. Didn’t matter.

KEY MOMENT

I’m tempted to say Sam Dreyer’s potentially season-ending injury at Worthing on Tuesday night, We looked and played like a team of strangers today. A team of strangers who wanted to be somewhere else. I believe they can be improved and given more confidence, but they did nobody any favours today, themselves included.

CONCLUSION

I feel desperately sorry for Paul Wotton and Mike Edwards tonight, They have worked hard to build something good at Plainmoor and to go from Manager of the Month to trapdoor in 4 weeks must be a bitter pill to swallow.

If this is the end (and I’m afraid it should be), I hope that in years to come Wotton will be remembered as a proud Devonian who gave it everything for our club. But it’s a results business, and right now it feels like a brutal one.

COYY – Clive

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