Neil Warnock says Torquay United will 'give it a go'

Neil Warnock, who has managed 16 clubs during a long career that took him from non-league to the Premier League, says new Torquay United manager Paul Wotton is level-headed enough to deal with the pressures of his new job.

Wotton was appointed by the Bryn Consortium on Tuesday, after a deal was agreed to buy the club with the administrators on Friday, and Warnock was handed a place on the board and the role of football advisor.

It was a chance meeting between Bryn Consortium lead Michael Westcott and Warnock on a train that took Torquay down the Warnock/Wotton route - and at Tuesday’s press conference, the 75-year-old talked about the 46-year-old’s strengths - and said that together they will ‘give it go’ next season in the National League South.

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“I think Paul is a level-headed lad,” said Warnock, who was his manager at Plymouth Argyle when Wotton was just starting out in the game. “I think the art of management is not getting too high when you are winning, and not getting too low when you lose.”

In five years at Truro City, Wotton coped with a lot. The club lead the Southern League when coronavirus >Covid hit and were then denied promotion despite being top of the table; they moved out of Cornwall and then won the Southern League Premier Division South play-offs, before fighting a relegation battle in the National South some 200 miles from home last season when they finished the season at Gloucester City.

Warnock said: “We have been talking for a couple of years, Paul and I about certain things - and I had to be on the end of a phone because somebody had to support Paul. I have never seen a situation like Paul has been in at Truro - like the Truro people I have spoken to. To have four or five different homes over a number of years and then Covid when they should have won the league and the league got abandoned.

“I said to Paul, don’t worry, things have a way of coming around - and there were a lot of experienced managers that would have liked the job here but I just think it fits both really. Paul is enthusiastic and determined and the new board of directors, Michael [Westcott] seemed honest to me. I know it’s unusual when you say that about a director or an owner of a club ... but I felt like he was an honest guy.

“I think we have just got to give it a go. You don’t know in football, none of us can predict what’s around the corner, but it won’t be for the lack of trying.”