Just been having my daily fix of what happened on this day on GoS website. I am wishing now that I hadn't bothered. A day of big wins. 1951.....Argyle 5-0 C Palace. 1962.....Argyle 7-1 PNE' !987.....Argyle 6-1 Huddersfield. We definitely owed our point last night to Jake Cole,who hasn't always curried favour because of his reluctance to come and claim the ball from centres. Carl Fletcher commented that "it was an off night for us tonight"....Also....."the lads worked hard, and putting a shift in for the team" at least no mention of the socks for a change. Most people think Young should be played in the centre of mid-field.....Carl played him out wide on the right flank again. Another away game on Saturday.......lets see.....OH it's Oxford......OH they're top of the league....another 0-0 success will be harder to achieve,me thinks.
It's 2012 Plymborn and we're recovering from a near-bankruptcy experience, so don't expect any big signings. In a small squad, let's hope Berry, Griffiths and Lowry are fit soon. We didn't concede last night despite a lot of pressure and by all accounts the defence played well after threats from Fletcher. That's a step forward from Saturday. We'll have to more than defend to get where we want to be but be thankful for small mercies.
notDistant we have got a hugh squad for this division...27/28 players I believe. I would say 50% of this league have weaker squads on paper than we have.......the difference is a lot of those clubs have better management that can get results out of their players. I shall get onto my favourite topic (stop yawning notDistant) until the manager starts to perform better how can you expect the players to play to their ability......I leave Chadwick out of that comment....he is playing to his ability already,which is not very promising,in fact diabolical.
26 currently as JHP is on loan I think. This includes Vassel, Copp, Richards, Simms (who have a couple of appearances between them) Lecointe, Young and Nelson who have been blooded harder and earlier than is probably best for them. Two of the new signings have yet to play, PCH has had about 60 minutes to adjust to league footie, Gorman still unpacking his bags and Berry is still injured. Can´t we keep the lid on the arsenic, rope un-noosed and kitchen cutlery out of the managers back until at least October. I am not sure what paper you are looking at that makes this squad so great but it must be green tinged. Of course we could always borrow heavily, pay a fortune on proven players and buy ourselves premiership football in 3 seasons easy.......what could go wrong?
And 3 are goal keepers...... Exactly Mexijan, in many ways it's good we have a crop of youngsters on the fringe of the first team but ideally you'd be playing them only 1 or 2 at a time in the odd less demanding game. Meanwhile, he hasn't got many options amongst the senior players, given he has 3 unfit that I know about. We'd all like to be be signing established successful players and storming to the top of the league but that's not where we are unfortunately. As always, much will depend on healthy gates to restore the club's finances. Regrettably, I think that will have to come from loyalty this season rather than glory. So far, gates have been reasonable I think: 5k in the League Cup on a Tuesday night, 7k at home in August and 600 Green Army out of a total gate of 1,800 at Dagenham. That will have to be maintained.
There is a great big even huge problem with that notdistant. You may not think so but all 3 of you are lucky to be spared having to watch this lot. The play is woeful at times. This is not condusive to maintaining a reasonable level of supporters through the gates. The mumblings, after one home match, are loud and wide spread. Even on pasoti may I add where dissent is so frowned upon by those in charge. If, and I know it is early days yet, the standard continues with the added poor results, the gates will fall off. It is not rocket science. If you play ok and get some decent results along the way then the crowds will be maintained but continue like this and most certainly they won't. The love affair with Brent is also wearing thin. He has invested absolutely nothing in the squad. All he ever talks about is a competetive budget or indeed a more than competetive one. Compare who and what we have signed with Fleetwood and Rotherham for example. They don't get the gates we do but they have bought loads. Somewhere along the line he will have to put his or some money where his mouth is if his words of "This is a big club and should be........." mean anything at all. Fletcher was forgiven last term because we stayed in the league even if the performances were lacking. He has started this term on a level playing field or if you believe Brent a financial advantage over most. The tactics and results have to be better than last term and they haven't started that way. Very very soon the calls for his head are going to be very very loud indeed and if Brent persists with him and ignores the supporters then the gates will fall off the edge. His projected budget will be only in his dreams then. I'm not being overly critical of either in this but you have to understand the feelings of the crowd and I hear the comments made around me and on websites. People are fed up with being asked to support when they seem to get little in return and Brent continues to invest nothing. People are beginning to say he is no better than Heaney would have been. It's all about opening the right doors for him to do his development rather than any feeling for the football club. Maybe right or maybe wrong but my favourite statement fits the bill once again, it's all about perception.
I will refrain from mocking those saying Brent is no better than Heaney they genuinely need medical assistance. Brent has done exactly what he said he would do, no cash injection was promised but the club being run as a self-sufficient business, which as painful as it maybe for a year or 2 needs to happen. When the comment of competitive budgets etc came out there was also a comment from Fletcher of missing a few of his targets can´t remember which came first but it was contradictory. From what I have seen from the highlights first game was a case of 1 woeful piece of defending and a soft penalty plus poor finishing. Tuesdays could have been a slaughtering though. Still way to early to be talking of ditching the manager and relegation. The poor performance thing is a combination of the last few seasons and whilst undoutably painful I do not see a quick fix other than bucket loads of cash which just don´t exist. Over the last few years better squads than we have now have played equally poor/worse football and achieved worse results under allegedly better managers than the current one. The rot set in a few years ago and there has been a losing mentality and bad atmosphere smothering Home Park for a while now but through the back half of last season we seemed to start getting points from games we would have lost in the past. Close season was an anti-climax in terms of signings but we haven´t even seen half of them in a competitive match yet let alone see if they can gel as a team. No-one knows how much cash is available for transfers/wages but it appears that others have more. This combined with the still precarious financial position of the club will not be helping in the recruitment of established players. At the end of close season if you look at it clinically we needed to sign: Goalkeeper - Required. Cole is average plus kid for cover. Gilmartin Rightback - Cover required - Lowry Leftback - Ok not priority could be improved. Central defence - Purse, Blanchard, Nelson, Richards OK Midfield - Required. Central solidish but uninspiring, wide weak - Gurrieri, Gorman, Lowry Attack - Required. 2 never prolific pensioners and a couple of kids - PCH, Griffiths So IMHO we needed to replace at least 7 or 8 of the team that are just not good enough let alone excellent and there was no way the cash was there for that. If we can bring on some of the youngsters this year plus Berry, Hourihane, Nelson, Lennox and a couple of the new signings stepping up then maybe a realistic 2-3 players next closed season and we will have a competitive side. Rome wasn´t built in a day and they had cash. I promise to come a feel the pain with you Sensible as soon as I am back in the UK and whilst I will moan and complain as much as anyone I am glad that the opportunity to suffer is still there and not some multiplex cinema and parking lot.
I don't agree with all of that mexijan but I do agree with a good deal. What I'm doing is reporting the mumblings that are real and coming from some of the fanbase. The similarity to Heaney is in the development side of things. The story we were given is that is all Heaney was after. Brent has done a few deals with PCC and he is off and running in that sphere. He will do very nicely out of it as well. That is where the similarity is pointed. People perceive him as using the club as a smokescreen for outside investment. Given he has paid out nothing for the club as such then it is hard to argue against that at the moment. Whilst people aren't expecting wads of cash I think they were expecting a lot more from closed season and the signings front. It didn't happen and the start has been poor. All they get from Brent is we have a better than average budget but other clubs are outsigning us with half the gate receipts. It isn't a wonder that the natives are restless.
I understand the rumblings but don´t get why people where expecting anything different. I was so bored I had a read on Pasoti the other day and was very suprised at the reaction after one game tbh. I never really considered them the brightest bunch, sheeple, but some of the comments directed against Fletcher and team did suprise me. Mind you once we had the pearls of wisdom on how to fix it my faith in the Pasoti populace was restored!!! PS The bits u don´t agree with ur wrong
The bit I don't agree with is that the club is still in a financially precarious position. It had it's debts wiped out and the back wages are being paid over 5 years so even that is not the end of the world. The crowd at Dagenham was 1800 apparently on Tuesday. We get nearly 7000 for home games at the moment. That is almost 4 times that amount. Even allowing for some of the current receipts to be hived off for back wages that should still have allowed us more or better by a long way to them and they aren't alone in the size of some gates either. Along with other people there were people signed on from the last season squad that raised my eyebrows a tad. Fletcher isn't ruthless enough and there are some who should have been ditched. This would have allowed more for new signings along with the cash saved on contracts that had expired which were expensive. For some bizaar reason it didn't happen although I take the point that we haven't seen some of them in anger yet.
I think Fletcher was a cheap option and still do ..... I'd like to see Reidy back and being given a fair crack of the whip this time ..... he stood by us in our darkest hour and he who's name I will not utter cast him aside like an old rag !
From the financial side I mean that a few clubs have tended to struggling once exiting administration, without the big money backer, and have gone back into admin or been very close. I think that may put off some players from joining. As for the extension of some contracts it is the squads overall weakness that caused this. If we had cleared out the crap then we would have been looking at 8-10 players to sign with limited funds. I am sure contracts where given to some that was more a case of better the devil you know....
I'm afraid we're getting back to the nub of the same old problem we've been arguing about since I first saw BBC 606. Big clubs have a large core of supporters who attend through thick & thin. What is being suggested here is that the support of a significant number of Argyle fans is conditional. What's worse is that the number that even call themselves Argyle fans is limited by idiots like the guy I heard of just the other day who was born in the city, lives here now but considers himself a fan of a major PL club in a city he has no connection with whatsoever. Not only has he made that choice for himself, he won't take his child to see Argyle. That's despite the fact the kid desperately wants to go rather than wait for what are presumably extremely rare opportunities to see the PL giant live. I know that for a fact because we took the child to his/her first Argyle game late last season and every time I see him/her, I'm badgered as to when we're going again. How sad is that? I have to say I couldn't decide whether my strongest feeling was fury or despair when I heard the background. I'm glad at least somebody one other person [Mexijan] sees it as I do. Brent never, ever said he was going to put money in beyond that needed to get the club afloat again. Even that sum was a considerable amount and it's nonsense to say he got the club for nothing. It was well known he was a property developer and would be doing deals around the redevelopment of the South Stand, partly for the benefit of the club, partly for his own benefit. Notwithstanding that, fans were desperate to get Brent in only - what was it - as much as 12 whole months ago. Now he's in, they want him out because he's doing exactly what he said he'd do? Memory span of a gnat comes to mind. I'm less convinced by Fletcher and I wouldn't have burdened him with the job in the first place. However, he's here and he kept us up last season when it looked absolutely hopeless, so I'm willing to give him my loyalty at least until Christmas or thereabouts.
What was the agreement on back pay I thought I read it was to be payed over the next 5 years. If all employees are to be paid in full and we went 6 months (maybe longer) without paying then we are paying out 10-15% of a squad. Bearing in mind some of this money was owed to players on Championship contracts that probably equates to 20+% of current wage bill, 4-5 players. If this payment is considered within the wage cap then this will have a considerable impact too.
Now don't try to inject common sense into this argument Mexijan......... And if the manager is sacked prematurely there will be another non-productive bill to pay, so it had better be the right decision.
