1. Log in now to remove adverts - no adverts at all to registered members!

So to summerize and look forward to 2021/22

Discussion in 'Plymouth' started by Plymborn, May 28, 2021.

  1. Plymborn

    Plymborn Well-Known Member
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    May 3, 2011
    Messages:
    15,485
    Likes Received:
    208
    Ryan Lowe has a clean slate and can start planning for the new season....having eight players still under contract he has offered five others new contracts.

    Reading Simon Hallett's latest chat... he believes that Ryan Lowe will be a better manager next season. He goes on to say......."Unlike many football clubs, we are taking a long-term approach to all aspects of what we do. We believe we have a talented football management team who are building a long-term foundations for our club. that starts with having an efficiently run organisation behind the team, runs through our day-to-day operations, goes through the Academy and ends with a squad that plays attractive winning football.

    Our football management team will continue to have our support, even if results are weak for a short period. So long as he is able to continue to show that he is willing to learn, embrace better processes, and maintain good relationships with the board and with fans, that will satisfy us".


    So Simon Hallett is stating that he his here for the long haul.....and that he has put in place an efficiently run organisation to run the day-to-day requirements of the club.

    He is also saying that Ryan Lowe will have our support...even if results are weak for a short period and is willing to learn and embrace better processes, keeping a good relationship with the board and the fans...that he is satisfied with.

    So Ryan Lowe has some leeway....but is expected over a short period of time to turn around the lack of success that was missing last season.....for instance acquiring only 8pts from the 45pts available in the last fifteen games played....true relegation form.

    Maybe question marks regarding his favourite style of setting up his team with wing backs....who quite often go missing when defending is required.

    At the beginning of last season the Club and Lowe were quite optimistic about the season ahead.....and we who joined the prediction league were optimistic as well....predicting a top half of the league finish.....but at the end of the season the club and Lowe claimed that the job was accomplished by staying up....now that was a lowering of what was expected.

    One bonus that was achieved for the club was the £2 million insurance claim....a shrewd decision by James Brent to insure the club against business interruption....which the club successfully claimed......one of the few things that Brent can be thanked for.

    We're told that...Data Analytics (the science of analyzing raw data in order to make conclusions about that information) was used to select player targets).....either it doesn't work or we analyzed it wrongly....Frank Nouble had his assets (keeping the ball by the corner flag for as long as possible)...but was never a fit for Lowe's style of playing.....Ben Reeves....Lowe claimed he isn't my type pf player (MOTM at Gilligham).....so will Lowe do better analyzing this coming season.....we hope so.....James Wilson seems the right type of player we need....surprised how quick he came in.....with over a month of his old contract left....he's had ankle and knee injuries in the past...and he has played surprisingly a modest amount of games for the length of his career...lets hope his injuries are well behind him.
     
    #1
    Last edited: May 28, 2021
  2. notDistantGreen

    notDistantGreen Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 7, 2011
    Messages:
    9,160
    Likes Received:
    177
    Glad to see you back Plym. Hope all is well.

    The key to this is the data analytics. I suspect the majority of managers, being of the older school, would still want to use their old buddies as a recruitment network and would bridle at having to base their judgements on a load of statistics. Neither of course do some managers in the lower leagues like to work with a director of football. With millions at stake, it's pretty much de rigueur in the Premier League, although it's not always popular even there, but less so further down where it's an expensive post some clubs feel able to do without.

    Of course it's not quite like that: all the stats do is identify possible targets: there's still a judgement to be made on character and so on and presumably to watch them play. It's that personal judgement the manager and presumably the director of football have to make.

    So far Lowe seems to have embraced these structures and methods and speaks well of the management of the club in general. The data analytics are not something any Argyle manager is going to able to challenge given Simon Hallett's commitment to it and I can see why. Any investment fund has vast armies of analysts who feed investment and divestment decisions. Just read this page and you'll see why Simon Hallett does things this way.

    https://www.hardingloevner.com/about-us/

    I'll quote one phrase.

    "Success can only be replicated through a repeatable process. Our structured investment process mitigates the unconscious biases that plague human decision-making."

    Players are a club's key investments, why do it any other way?

    I think it's a bit unfair to pick out Nouble and Reeves as examples of failings in the data analytics system. Both were recruited last summer and the project had hardly got started at that point.

    https://www.pafc.co.uk/news/2020/april/smart-recruitment/

    https://www.pafc.co.uk/news/2020/august/vacancy-first-team-data-scientist/

    Nouble's corner flag antics were a result of coming on as a very late substitute in most of his appearances but when you have Hardie and Ennis, you can't really see how he'd get too many starts. I don't recall Lowe saying Reeves wasn't his type of player. Personally, I thought he did pretty well when he did come on and I wonder whether his problem was maintaining full match fitness.

    With fans having been absent, Lowe didn't bear the normal brunt of criticism (and/or abuse) that would have normally echoed around the stadium when results were as poor as in the second half of last season. You'll remember how Derek Adams lost the plot in similar circumstances in 2018/19. Nevertheless, the abuse was there online again in 2020/21 despite Lowe having been canonised by the very same fans a year or even 6 months earlier. The corollary of collective decision making ought to be collective responsibility and the club is willing to bear a short period of weak results and if not all fans are willing to buy into the long term nature of the project in the same way, then the manager will have to find a a way of not "doing a Derek".
     
    #2
  3. Plymborn

    Plymborn Well-Known Member
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    May 3, 2011
    Messages:
    15,485
    Likes Received:
    208
    I clearly remembered that Lowe said Reeves wasn't his style of player....it just surprised me at the time....and specially after being.. MOTM at Gillingham.

    Took some finding but it was.... a Plymouth Live article that I read on Newsnow....Dated13th of May.....titled....Ryan Lowe explains why it did not work out for Ben Reeves at Plymouth Argyle.

    I take your point about Data Analytics that Simon Hallett would depend on in his line of work all the time... would be brand new for Argyle to identify players with 12 months ago....lets hope it's up and running this summer.
     
    #3
  4. notDistantGreen

    notDistantGreen Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 7, 2011
    Messages:
    9,160
    Likes Received:
    177
    I try to avoid the Herald site............... crammed full of weird adds and clickbait links. It is a bit better since the new data protection act: at least you can stop it stuffing your computer with noxious cookies.

    So I missed that. Strange, he gets stuck it, is a decent passer and strikes a good shot. Perhaps it's because we've been playing with 1 x DM and 2 x AM. He's not defensive enough for the first and not attacking enough for the second. He'd have suited a 2 x DM set up better.
     
    #4
  5. Plymborn

    Plymborn Well-Known Member
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    May 3, 2011
    Messages:
    15,485
    Likes Received:
    208
    When I went to Wembley with my son and grandson for the Charlton v Sunderland play-off final a few years back....Reeves was an unused sub for Charlton.....that's the day Purrington scored the winner.
     
    #5

Share This Page