Questions swirling around Plainmoor amid Torquay United's managerial future

If life was straightforward, with every issue in black and white, we’d all be experts.

So the arguments still swirl around Plainmoor about the rights and wrongs of Torquay United’s decision to sack manager Paul Wotton at the weekend.

Should the board have given Wotton, who had done almost everything asked of him over 20 months, more time?

Should they have ignored the ‘noise’ from the fans who wanted him out?

Should they have listened a bit harder to the not-so-noisy section of the Plainmoor crowd who still backed him?

How many were in each camp? And how long might it have been, if Wotton’s team hadn’t pulled out of its current rut, before more of the pros had joined the antis?

One or two things are certain.

There was no personal animosity over the decision. No shouting matches.

The Bryn Consortium have also hinted that it wasn’t just last Saturday’s 5-0 home defeat by Chelmsford City that triggered the bullet.

For all the reasons that continue to weigh Torquay United down in the National League South – those lofty expectation levels and the need to keep 3,000+ gates coming through the turnstiles – the pressure had been building.

But as caretaker Neil Warnock gave his upbeat interviews after Tuesday’s ‘thank-goodness’ point against lowly Farnborough (2-2), you couldn’t help wondering what the atmosphere might have been like if Wotton had still been in charge and the side had struggled again.

It would surely have been even more hostile than it was after the Chelmsford match.

And for his sake, nobody would have wanted Wotton to go through that. He wouldn’t have deserved it.

More than 3,000 did turn up on a bracing March night, to support Warnock and the club, and they stuck with both even when there was little to cheer.

Now so much hangs on what happens over the next few days.

Somehow the Gulls are still fourth, but they have a tough trip to Ebbsfleet United ahead on Saturday, plus home games against Salisbury and Chesham United next week.

Can Warnock, whose longtime assistant Ronnie Jepson was also there on Tuesday, be persuaded to carry on? And for how long?

Might they need a few more bob to do the job?

Is a Warnock ‘interim’ spell to the end of the season even a possibility?

And if it isn’t, how quickly can the board home in on the right man to take over permanently?

The pressure is well and truly on. As it nearly always is at Plainmoor...