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devonsurfer

Member
Jun 5, 2011
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When looking at a problem, it is all too easy to focus on the immediate or recent events as being the cause.

We need to look at the bigger picture here.

Argyle have been on a downward slide ever since Holloway left and the club sold all those great players. Ever since that time we've been tumbling down and down without mercy. It hasn't mattered who has been in charge, who the owner(s) has been, who the manager has been, who the players have been, the club keeps skirting the bottom of the table no matter what league we find ourselves in. This trend will continue in the Blue Square next season also because nobody is looking for the root cause of the problem.

Far too many people can only see as far back as the near-extinction event last year as being the root of all our problems. This is simply not the case. The tumble down the league system was already in full swing long before administration reared its head. Port Vale, who have also been through the same administration process, have ridden through it completely unaffected on the field. I repeat - The terminal freefall was already underway long before we entered administration. In fact it could actually be argued that the administration period actually came about as a result of failure on the pitch and falling attendences, not the other way around as some seem intent on believing.

So, the failure to be able to consistently perform on the field has been going on for around 4-5 years. Why? In that time we've had managers Paul Sturrock, Paul Mariner, Peter Reid & Carl Fletcher all fail to arrest the slide.
We've had amazing players like Jamie Mackie, Craig Noone, Bradley Wright-Phillips, Joe Mason, Yanick Bolasie, Ashley Barnes etc but all have failed to deliver a fraction of their potential whilst at Argyle and have all gone on to far better things once gone. Many of them have realised incredible potential and are fans favourites at their clubs but when they were here, none of them could arrest the slide of Argyle either.
We've also had numerous and complex syndicates of owners. We've had input from dozens of businessmen and some football men also. None of these have been able to arrest the slide of Argyle.

I'm not claiming to have the answer, but I do declare that the answer lies somewhere behind the evidence detailed above. My hunch is that something is seriously wrong in the set-up / technical training side of the club.

What do other clubs have different in their composition that we don't? Therein lieth the answer.......
 
I think there is a huge slice of poor decision making by numerous people in Argyle's demise. It just seems that a some point a decision was made which started the collapse and subsequent decisions have been equally poor since. Nobody has taken the club by the scruff of the neck and shaken it till the bones rattle. Interest in the actual football side of the club has taken second place to a number of off field things and when those things have failed then the club has paid the penalty for it and the protagonists have walked away. It's like a chain reaction leading to a nucleur explosion.

Somebody needs to stop, have a long hard look and make global changes. To do this will cost of course. Therein lies the problem now in that there isn't it seems anyone willing to fund anything let alone an overhaul. Argyle have proved in reletively recent history that they can be a decent going concern but who will take a punt on it. Not anyone currently connected I'm sure. So, in the meantime we bump along the bottom waiting for the final rock to hit and be sure that it will at some point. I wish I could wake up tomorrow with an "A" star plan and the means to make it happen but dreams like that don't often happen in real life. Maybe I should just start making a place for Rugby in my Saturday life instead although I don't think Albion are in a much better place. Basketball then perhaps.
 
Good post Sensible and very accurate too. Poor decision making indeed but not only that, extremely slow decision making too. We have a track record of accepting failure for far too long before any action is taken. We also have a track record of not taking sufficient action. As you say the club needs, and has needed for several years, a complete clear out and total re-assessment of where it's going and where it's failing.
Changing the manager now will probably not make any difference, that's not an endorsement of Fletcher, far from it, but the club needs so much more than just a new manager. It needs new facilities, new coaches, new training methods and staff etc. In a nutshell it needs a complete overhaul top to bottom and some serious investment in the technical setup of the club.
Sadly not going to happen, that is immediately clear. Brent is not going to make the required investments to turn the club around technically. I don't think he even realises he has to, this is a completely new ball game to him, literally! I fear more mistakes and more poor and delayed decisions will be made (or not) before we see any sign of positive change. With only a 1 point buffer now between us and non-league status then time has run out. It's now or never. All signs are its going to be never.
 
Stop agreeing with me surfer it's unnerving. You'll be taking me to Newquay soon at this rate.

It really is depressing isn't it. You can tell from the various football sites what the supporters think and say it mostly. Even Pasoti, that well known bastion of blind following anything green, is beginning to slide into reality. There are posters on there who a while ago would never have dreamt of questioning anything let alone posting it. The trouble is that stayinng away isn't going to be the answer either. If as I suspect Brent isn't that bothered about the club itself then he won't care a jot if the wheels come off for good. Whilst he hasn't done anything as such or said anything that wrong, I still have my doubts about any committment other than for development purposes. He sure won't press a panic button if the crowd disappears so it would be a fruitless demonstration from a supporter side of things.

The only thing I have left to cling onto is a vague hope that things will get better despite all of the above. I think the players want to be better and I think Fletcher wants to succeed. I don't think he will throw in the towel which is the only plus on his list from where I sit. Just think how it would look to the football world. He Captains the club to successive relegations and then is in charge when it falls out of the league and possible oblivion. Future employment might be a problem for him with that on his CV.
 
I think in all seriousness that there is some clause on the land that only football can be played there. If Argyle cease to exist however it does sort of make it vacant. Change that to Rugby perhaps? I can't see PCC being over the moon at the club going bust after they bailed out the take-over with the purchase of the stadium etc. The last person to get a contract to build anything on it would be Brent. Don't forget he sold it off at the start.
 
Oh dear, starting to agree with too many people on here so will revert to backing the current regime. Sensible & Devon you are probably correct 'someone' needs to have a look at what the club is here for and is trying to achieve. It is what I now do by way of a job (sort of) and would relish the chance to do it at PAFC. The problem is that it can be a painful process and actually JB has already started this process and been roundly criticized for it (eg the redundancies). Argyle is only a medium size business (both in terms of turnover, and more importantly the number of staff). It would be relatively simple to go in, look at the club's aims, current structure and what needs to change to achieve the stated aims. Fundamentally this means looking at the infrastructure and assessing what needs to be put in place to give a chance of success. So, new main stand to generate income; new training facilities; good youth set up; a product to encourage people to spend their money at the club. Surely this is what JB has stated is his intent and what he has started to do.
The problem is, emotions and short-termisn gets in the way. Rome wasn't built in a day and you have to build a sustainable business first, and personalities come second; so as alluded to by various posts, changing the manager/chairman/owner may create very short term improvements but unless there is a proper structure in place this will not be sustained beyond a season or so at most.
As much as I would like us to to be pushing for promotion I anticipate a couple of dull seasons. Probably get harangued for this but there is too much inefficiency in the current setup that needs stripping out, and whilst the loyalty of the staff may have saved the club from extinction, too much sentiment and the retention of some of them (as opposed to employing professional and motivated people) threatens to stifle real progress. In the absence of someone with long pockets, restructuring (and thus the ability to succeed) will probable take a long time. The choice is a long term strategy for success, and accept that this will be painful & take time, or, a knee jerk reaction to league position, and try and achieve short term improvements by making changes that may or may not work. I know what my preference is....
 
The Clubs Aims.......1).....TO WIN GAMES OF FOOTBALL...... 2).....TO WIN GAMES OF FOOTBALL......3).....TO WIN GAMES OF FOOTBALL.

When this then is being achieved.....we will then look into the aspects of running a successful club.........because without regular success on the pitch any finance that the club has is disappearing down a blach hole of failure.

I think people over complicate what is necessary to have a successful club.........the core element required.......a damn good manager....worth his weight in gold.

Let the search begin now...and pay him accordingly.
 
I can see who started this thread but not what he said, at the moment, but this is an important topic and so far, a good debate.

It's perfectly clear what the main objective is: as everyone else has said, it's to run a winning League football team.

Much has been said about the need for entertainment and clearly that's a very desirable extra, because good football is often [although not always] winning football. But the only objective, certainly from where we are now is to get back on the upward path; once that's done style can be added. Good football is often winning but winning football is always always attractive to fans however, it's achieved.

Personally, I think we've gone to far along the pretty football spectrum for this particular division and every week we seem to be punished by teams with hulking great centre-forwards & centre backs. For example, the centre forward for Bradford is 6 ft 4 I believe. I also think we need one player to put some steel into midfield, so any immediate pump-priming ought to be aimed at providing that sort of Plan B, even if Plan A remains the passing game.

However, there is an important constraint that makes it rather more complicated, namely the cost of hiring & paying players. Whatever funds are available need to take into support an effective youth system because it's always going to be hard for any club below the Top 10 Elite to buy everything it needs in the open market. The Premier League clubs have recently tilted the rules even more in their favour in this area and you have to build & maintain the right standard of scheme to protect you from the worst kind of poaching. This is going to cost money but it's important enough strategically to divert funds from short term transfer market investment.

It's inevitable that if you produce good young players, a number of them will end up being sold on. At least if the club's in a sound financial position [a big if], it'll be better able to avoid giving players away as it's been forced to do over the past couple of years.
 
We must try really hard not to muddy the waters between business and the football. It's not for fans to debate the business side and the finance side because we don't know Brents real intentions, we don't know the intricate details of the clubs finances and we don't know the wider business plan, although property development appears fairly obvious. Any discussion on this aspect is pure guesswork and fantasy.

We do however know what is going on on the pitch, it is publicly visible and open for all to see. That is all we should be concerned with.

The biggest pressing concern for fans is what James Brent is going to do (or not) to arrest the slide on the pitch not in the boardroom or the accounts office. Brent is the overall owner and when the operations management fail, the owner has to step in and take control, he is not doing this. I'm going with Sensible again on this, I think Brent is quite prepared for us to go out of the league. Obviously wouldn't be his preferred option but the inactivity and slow/poor decision making points towards him being reasonably comfortable with this outcome. Any other club in this position, in any league, would have taken emergency action by now. 1 point off non-league and Brent is dilly-dallying, fluffing about, poking at the problem but totally avoiding taking the expected action. Any other club in the land would have removed the manager by now, end of, no questions asked. Untenable position is the phrase often used. When the fanbase turns and the product is terminal then the manager goes, that's the rule. Brent won't do it. It is immediately obvious that Fletcher is bullet-proof and will not be removed no matter what. This is a painful and frustrating situation for the fans to have to endure. He should be long gone but he's still here and it hurts to see him blundering along and making wet and deflated excuses at press conference after press conference as we continue to get beaten week after week.

This lack of action coupled with continuing and mounting losses has led me to now expect no other outcome than relegation out of the league system. With that in mind, my thoughts turn to the implications of this. I'm not too sure of the what the impact would be. What would the club stand to lose by being relegated out of the league? What is league status worth to a club financially? Is there any real measurable difference between league 2 and conference? I'm curious because Brent seems quite comfortable with this inevitable outcome and if there is no real difference to him and his wallet then it might explain his lack of action?
 
DS I take yr point that none of us know what goes on in Brent's mind but it is nigh on impossible to separate activities on and off the pitch as the business side is required to support the playing side and they are therefore inextricably linked. We seem to spend a lot of time in pushing fantasy as truth so I think to speculate on his plans isn't a bad thing, and time will tell who is closest to the the real truth.
All I can say is that if as you believe he is 'quite prepared for us to go out of the league' then he has more swiftly changing opinions than Hollowords As that would be the worst possible for out come for him- not least because of reputational damage. You are absolutely right in that CF would be an ex manager at any other club but my feeling is that one way or another Brent has been slow to prepare for CFs failure, but he now has some football experience in the boardroom and is looking for a director of football (personally I would prefer a directer of operations who also does the DoF role).
trying to second guess JB, I think that if by 01 jan 13 things haven't improved, CF will be sacked and a new manager will have a month with the transfer window. Probably a month too late, but half a season should be long enough to turn things round.
 
If the covenant says that "only football can be played" etc that rules out Argyle then:emoticon-0109-kiss::emoticon-0109-kiss::emoticon-0109-kiss::emoticon-0109-kiss:
 
Lyndhurst

On the contrary, I think you can infer quite a lot, provided you are willing to quite simply take what people say at face value.

Brent's clearly got the intention of running the club in a different, more professional way [e.g. fan involvement, balanced budget and continuity of management] than the hare-brained madness at a lot of clubs. This would have the big advantage that he could more or less wash his hands of it and let it manage itself, because he didn't really want it in the first place.

In the short term he needs to keep the council onside but beyond that, if the fans aren't on board with what he's trying to do, he's not suddenly going to convert to the Arfer Daley style of football management and it's unlikely there's anyone else daft enough to take the club off his hands, so the logical conclusion is that it'll just run itself into the ground again.
 
I agree with the statement about style of football notdistant. We are playing a better visable style and at times it looks good. However we aren't getting the results to go with it and you are right that supporters will forgive anything if the results are right but nothing if they are not. It is not a time to try to be Barca.

It is hard to seperate the on field/off field stuff because in our case they appear dependant on each other. No big cash injection means we have to live within a tight budget. Poor results make that worse when people get fed up and leave. There does need to be a radical overhaul of the whole set up but it needs to cost very little. Just because it costs little does not mean it can't be done or at least be set in motion. I see little sign of anything happening currently. I agree with DS in that Brent appears slow to act in most things. He may be a learner when it come to actual football but he can hardly be described as that in business terms. He must see that the poor results are damaging and the implications of that should it continue and him do nothing. Yet nothing seems to be what we are getting. If the supporters could see any signs of him trying to tackle the problems I think they would stick with it for a bit longer. I don't understand how so many supposed novices, i.e. us the supporters in general, can see things yet he cannot. It makes no sense so that is where my thought that he can see it but choses to ignore it because it doesn't matter to him comes from. The words are there in the public domain but the action is missing. Ergo people do not believe him and are sceptical of his true motives.

I have absolutely no problem with the concept of it taking a bit of time to get sorted and it won't happen overnight. I have no problem with languishing in mid table for a couple of seasons. I have never thought it would be otherwise. Some people have outlandish ideas of what was to happen but generally I think most thought like that anyway despite the hype and hope. What I didn't expect was to spend a couple of seasons in a dogfight again with every chance we will lose the battle. Sentiment should not play a part. Cut out the deadwood, arrest the slide and go from there. I actually don't think it would cost a fortune to do it and Brent may reap the reward in interest and numbers. But he won't take any risk at all so I guess that won't happen.
 
I agree with most of that - it's clear we are a couple of players short and we don't need any more promising youngsters, we need a spine of experience & strength off which the likes of Lennox & Gurrieri & PCH can play. Two or three might make a big difference if they're the right ones. That can't happen before the [stupid] transfer window opens....

Believe me Sensible, I've seen all sorts of Chief Execs & similar. There's one. who I won't name, who was so keen to appear dynamic & decisive for his own vanity and advancement that he was capable of changing strategy three times in one conversation. A walking disaster area.

By comparison, I know another who took charge of a big organisation bringing a Big Brain analyst with him. Think Mad Scientist for the latter. They locked themselves away for about 3 months and everyone wondered what sort of weirdos they were. When they did come out, they had the best thought through understanding & strategy you've ever seen.....

Don't confuse being slow to act with a) thinking carefully before making decisions or b) having a clear idea of what you're doing and sticking to it, even if it isn't what the majority want.

Of course, I can't say where Brent fits in any of that, but believe me, shooting from the hip is rarely the best option.
 
notDistant.......could that pairing be possibly Brent/Sexstone.......Sexstone/D of F.........or Brent/D of F........as you see I haven't included Carl Fletcher in any of those match-ups and to be honest I would be very disappointed if you did either.

The worrying thing is time waits for no man and we are becoming cut adrift from a mid-table safety spot......and what little form we have got will come under more pressure if we do not win at least 2/3 of the next five games.
 
Don't hold your breath joe. I think Fletcher is far from the sack the way things look. He should be gone now but look at the solution being touted. A guiding hand to hold his. Doesn't sound like a recipe for change does it.

I've been a part of a think tank sort of exercise. Where I worked they were looking to overhaul almost everything and I got invited to join the team. I was quite flattered if I'm honest. We met every week and discussed everything that we did and how we did it. I was there as the coal face worker who had to put things into practice and had done pretty much everything the old way. I also think I was there to sell it to the masses with whom I was quite well thought of if I do say it myself. Reasoning that if I thought it was good and had an input then others would accept it. This did go on for months and required a load of radical thinking but most of it was adopted in the end and was better working practice. I can see the merits in this but as Plym has said we may not have months and months. Sooner or later though somebody is going to have to look at the whole thing in detail and radically shake it up as DS suggests. I would hope it is already under way and we just don't know about it. It should have been underway at the end of last season.
 
Well Sensible, i agree he will not be gone soon, but he should be. A helping hand is not the way forward.
I have seen the previous posts and tend to agree that the only way is a big Shake up.. before its to late. As if we do go to the conference it will be very difficult to find a way back. We will still need money, the crowds will dwindle further. I am not to sure what Brent does actually want? He is a mystery! Hope fully i am proved wrong in my thinking about hm then i will say sorry? But he is only here for the Deals surrounding PAFC. I know Distant will say that is true but it was not we were to believe when he Got pafc cheaply.. He was in the crowds saying he wants us back in the championship? a joke, we are at least 10 years away from that again. shame really. That is how i see it and i don't think this other geezer sexton or what ever he is called will make a difference .. i think another taker? i hope i am wrong. It seems that any one who gets involved at that level(Board) are dodgy.. look at the past and it is no better. also we have the clowns webb and co. Any way hope you had a good day, great weather,, bit chilly now
 
Terms & conditions apply, see the small print,

Wanting PAFC in the Championship and saying it ought to be there is NOT the same as offering to pay for it.... and he didn't ever say he intended to put money in to buy that success.

He'd have been better off NOT making that remark as it's clearly been misinterpreted. He did say he was finding being involved in a football club more enjoyable than he expected and I fear he got a bit carried away without thinking what the fans would assume he meant. A mild case of Greenitis I think.

I think we'd all agree that the Championship IS the minimum a city the size of Plymouth should aim for. The question is only what's likely to be the most likely way of getting there - neither evolution nor revolution are guaranteed to succeed.

I believe that if you look around modern football and the number of clubs either already in trouble or those that would be close to collapse if their backers suddenly withdrew [I'd place Man City & Chelsea in that group for a start], then a sustainable structure is the only one to go for and that means evolution and patience from all concerned.
 
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