Torquay United V ETFC

[Out_Of_Towner]

Even in defeat I'll take that as a positive , Not sure what Torquay's strength is due to the financial mess they've had. 

[Benjrider10]

We made a weekend of it and drove down on Friday, staying in an AirB&B a 5 minute walk from Plainmoor.

I hadn’t been to any of the pre-season friendlies, so hadn't seen any of our new signings play. Didn’t know what to expect but was pleasantly surprised. 

Torquay’s stadium and facilities were very impressive. Seeing automatic sprinklers pop out from under the pitch during half time to water the pitch isn’t the norm at our level, we’re more used to man with hose 🤭. I’ve seen various numbers floating around re their playing budget - safe to say it is at least double, if not triple, ours. But you wouldn’t have known it based on our performance.

The manager and his staff deserve enormous credit for giving our team the confidence to go out and play our game. They’re not used to this quality of stadium either so could well have been overawed.

I’m sure most readers will have seen the highlights by now, so can see for themselves what a superb move and finish our goal was. Yes, Torquay had more possession than us and created plenty of chances, but their equaliser was lucky. The shot was heading wide until it deflected in off the unlucky Scott Thomas. Their second goal was well worked but our marking from the cross was poor. Nevertheless, most of us away fans would have taken being 2-1 down at half time before the match. We were very much in the game.

The manager changed things around early in the second half and we really got into the game. Torquay had chances to get a third but we defended well. And we were so close to nicking an equaliser in injury time. That would have been the icing on the cake.

Our new CB (Nembhard) looked good paired up with Bernie, as did our new RB (Oyenuga). The manager said after the Ware game that he had some difficult decisions to make. Seeing Mickey Parcell and Dylan on the bench was surprising (maybe they weren’t fully fit), but the new players played well. Our tall, rangy Albanian midfielder (Krasniqi) had a very good game. Solid in the tackle, covered the ground well and laid off some nice passes. Same goes for one of our new CFs (Folivi) who worked hard and was a handful for the Torquay CBs. If we had been able to slide some good passes for him to run onto, I felt he had the beating of both their CBs for pace.

Our squad now looks like it has real depth in midfield and up front, particularly when the new signings who are injured regain fitness. Anybody know if Nana Owusu is fit? He wasn’t in Saturday’s squad. Looking forward to seeing him partner Folivi up front (hopefully) at home games. Competition for places will be fierce.

So a simple takeaway for me - we can compete at this level 👍

Edited August 12 by Benjrider10