Signed for South Shields.

We are expected to sign a winger within the next 24 hours. Previously played under TW.

No surprise.

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He'll get criticised by the usual supporters who can't take any departures (the same people who slagged off Turnbull).

But actually I thought Gillies was excellent for us. Yes he was inconsistent but when he was on form, he was fantastic. And only Styche and Thompson scored more last season.

Disappointed he's left but I think the writing may have been on the whole when Nicholson arrived.

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Disappointed by that (pending a replacement) - when he was playing well he was a great player to watch. No surprise that it's Shields he's gone to - and a bit of a money I suppose.

Be interesting to see who is coming in - most of Wright's signings since he's been here have been (or in the case of the summer signings, look like they will be ) good signings.

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Good player when he was on form. Still think his performance in the 4-1 at Harrogate 2 seasons ago was one of the best individual performances by a Darlo player that I've seen.

His record wasnt too bad for a wide player 20 goals in 80 odd games. Signed an extension not too long ago and only 27 so expecting to have got circa £10k for him.

Wish him well think if he gets on form SS will have a very good player at that level. They are certainly building a very solid team.

Looking forward to seeing who else Tommy has lined up.

As others have said, when on form too good for this level but let’s be honest he went missing for most of the autumn/winter. If TW thinks he can sign someone who will be more consistent plus we make a profit then it’s all good. I’m sure TW would not have been forced to sell him so I’d expect the incoming player to be better - quite excited to see who it is.

Ainge is going to rely on some good service into the box so a decent crosser of the ball is a must

South Shields are becoming the new Spennymoor, signing our cast-offs. Only real difference is they seem to be taking players we wouldn't mind hanging on to in some cases!

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Replacement is an 'out and out left winger' with 'electric pace'

A player like that will make our squad more balanced, as at times we've missed genuine width on the left

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There's an interesting video interview with Alun Armstrong at Blyth in which he is asked about business in bringing players into the club this summer. He answers first with a huge sigh and then says: "It's hard, it's tough out there competing... even Morpeth and South Shields paying a lot more money than we do." South Shields are able to mop up the good North-east players. The axis of our club now seems to be shifting somewhat with the net continuing to spread outside the immediate area. It does give us more options against the North-east bankrollers like Shields and Spennymoor.
With the decent players South Shields already had at their disposal (as we discovered last season), plus the sound, experienced additions they have made you'll certainly get a very good run for your money in backing them for the title, providing the loss of Julio Arca hasn't hit them too hard because he has been their main man.

I mentioned Alex Henshall as a possiblity earlier in the summer who TW signed for Nuneaton. Would fit the bill.

Hopefully they have deep pockets so might have been able to push them to that!

Gillies stats always suggested he was doing ok, 10 goals per season and probably 10 assists or so. However he did seem to go missing when the going got tough, tracking back was not natural to him but last season he actually put a lot of work in doing this, however at the same time his influence attacking wise seemed to reduce.

No doubt will do quite well at South Shields but if Wright can upgrade then it's a good move for everyone. Would only be disappointed if Wrights replacement fails to hit similar Gillies standards which were ok but nothing outstanding.

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Gillies was certainly a lot more effective than mills.

A little bit undecided on this one.Gillies is a player I like, great set piece deliveries and sorry he has gone tbh but just wondering whose decision it was to go, his or TW.Anyway , looking forward to seeing who the new lad is.

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Mills, who was totally ineffectual, so no great yardstick to judge Gillies.. Good skills and touch on his good days which was seldom, Overall poor, lacked heart, no great loss and frees up valuable resource

Pleased about this.

Whilst Gillies had undoubted talent, and on his day was a worldbeater - he only ever seemed to have one day in every 10.

More often that not he was a pea hearted, disinterested passenger and to be honest I was slightly surprised that we offered him a new contract and didn't just offload him to Shields in the summer.

In fact - for those who may try and accuse me of saying this because I'm bitter he's left - I joked at the time that we must have offered him an August + April contract because he only seemed to play well in good weather. He did finish last season very well though.

He's more than replaceable - OK possibly with a less talented but harder working and more consistent replacement.

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“Everybody knows where that club is going now, so I’m out of the way. They can carry on, it’s their club, they can keep it." - Raj Singh, 2017

Genuine question - where does this "he lacked heart" and "he was pea-hearted" stuff come from?

Yes he didn't charge around the pitch like a nutcase. And yes he didn't go barrelling into challenges.

But that wasn't and will never be his game. I personally think he did show plenty of "heart" but because of the type of player he is, and the style he has, that will never come across. He was our third top scorer last season and provided plenty of assists, so clearly performed well generally.

I just think at times fans criticise players for not being what we want them to be, rather than judging on the type of player he is.

It was the same thing with Turnbull, when people slagged him off for not scoring goals. That just simply wasn't his game.

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Quality when he first signed for us, then signed a bumper new contract and wasn’t interested after that, glad he’s off the wage bill.

I think with Mills it was a mistake to bring in a player who was so totally out of condition and unfit and he had been like that for some time.

I can see Gillies scoring quite a few and creating a lot in that South Shields set-up in the Glue League.

To me, he often hid when the going was tough, hence the pea hearted comments. Often he was marked or bullied out of games, especially during winter - don't know if that was just a co-incidence or whether he was really a fair weather player. To me, he was the epitome of a luxury player.

As for Turnbull, well he's in his 30s now and possibly past his peak. He is not going to improve in future seasons so maybe the timing was right on this one. I agree that his game wasn't about scoring goals, but his game was also about not making a forward pass, ever, much to my frustration.

I did notice last season that he dallied around and lost possession more often than the season before.

Overall he was a good player and that cannot be denied, but I didn't think he was as great as some people make out.

More of a concern is that we've lost a massive chunk of the core of players who have been at Darlo a long timee, and with it you might imagine their mentality, togetherness and ethic has gone with them too. With the likes of Brown, Hunter, Turnbull, Portas, Scott, Gillies moving on, Thompson and Galbraith might start to feel like strangers to the others.

With all of the wholesale changes it could go either way next season. We could do well but we may take a long while to gel (based on us bringing probably 3 more fresh faces in). The biggest concern is that all the new faces don't get along in the dressing room, whereas we can all be pretty sure that we've had a great team spirit in previous seasons.

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Spot on Quakerz.

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Got to say Quakerz this is a fair assessment of both players. Interesting comment about "Team Spirit." Spend a few days with the Army lads at Catterick maybe? Not sure about others, but I always found when we had these when I worked, they were good at the time but once back in the work enviroment nothing much changed!

Quakerz spot on again. Gillies on his day is a great player to watch but can be so infuriating when hes not on his game, usually during the colder months on the dodgy pitches.
Hope he does well for Shields though, no grudges against any of the players who have left us for them.

Early reporting back to pre-season training is probably one way of helping this. I don't think there'll actually be any Nuneaton v Darlo cliques, simply because our management team has Whitey as well as Tommy.

I was thinking the same. it could be an issue - but on saying that it was inevitable at some stage that this was going to happen.



Shields made numerous offers apparently - so T.W. obviously waited until the price was right, this makes good sense.

The transfer situation is different to which we became used to under Gray, as we worked upwards through the leagues. T.W. appears to be doing a difficult job quite well, keeping an eye on the money side of things and being less gung ho.

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Tamworth matchday programme 26 Nov 2011

One thing that is quite ironic is that Shields have signed 4 players to improve them but they have signed them from a team which they obliterated last season.

Though to be fair Hunter and Brown didn't play due to injury.

Both Gillies and Turnbull were both useless that day though.

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Regardless of what happened that day South Shields have signed some good experienced players from us who i believe will help get them promoted.

I am surprised Gillies has gone, I thought he had won Tommy over as he was a regular starter, however maybe the offer was too good to turn down.

Wonder if some of this additional money will be used to pay Caton off, I can't see Tommy wanting to keep a transfer listed player around the squad for team morale, unless we can off load him on loan but even then we will end up paying a majority of his wages.

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When the going got tough, Gillies would frequently disappear from games.

I am also dismayed to find too many comments on this thread saying that Gillies failed to pull his weight. Not in my assessment. Did the job he was paid to do. Didn't see too many having a pop at Harry Kane the other night for failing to be everywhere on the pitch and making last ditch tackles. Thank heaven for the sake of the national team that he knows where he will make the biggest impact and he stuck his two chances away. And for those who like to pick up on the details of what might get their knees jerking, I am not for a moment likening Gillies to Kane in terms of ability, just the application to the job he was on the field to do.