I agree about players leaving. It’s inevitable.
However, these players you mentioned weren’t brought in on the cheap either. I can’t see Argyle spending anything like these sums on players in the transfer market.
Brentford took a gamble. They spent reasonable sums of money, to make more. I’m not sure Argyle are prepared to go down this same route because our chairman thinks the transfer market is a gamble.
This is what Brentford spent bringing some of those players in.
Andre Gray brought from Luton for £500,000.
Neal Maupay brought from St Etienne for 1.8 million
Ollie Watkins brought from Exeter for 6.5 million.
You need to see the other end of those transfers though
Grey sold for something like £6m
Maupay sold for something like £20m
Watkins sold for £25m-£33m (and bought for only £1.8m according to wikipedia)
and another one to add in is
Scott Hogan, bought from Rochdale for £750k, sold to Aston Villa for £8m
But these are only a few of many such deals and they started with smaller amounts . The exact numbers are not critical but it's clear that the strategy views players as assets that are bought low and sold high a few years later. These examples are all showing a 10x return (just considering the transfer fees - you could argue that the cost of the wages was returned by the value of the player during their time at the club).
I'm not suggesting that Argyle will (or should) be exactly like Brentford but the same strategy would be valid starting at a lower base - buy low when under-valued, develop/mature, sell high when over-valued (or at least more highly-valued). In Argyle's case it begins with astute free transfers who are then sold on for hundreds of thousands of pounds and then perhaps some modest fee transfers (tens of thousands - £200k) sold on for £1m. Camara, Hardie, Ennis all potentially fall into the first phase of this category, as would someone like Garrick if he was signed.
Another key difference is that Argyle are not dispensing with their youth development channel and I think that's sensible because we are not sitting next to a massive city packed with clubs who are releasing young but talented players every year. In effect it provides a basic supply of low cost talent some of which will serve the club for a period before being sold on at good profit. Cooper, Randell, Law and the younger pros coming through all fall into this category. The trick with these ones is getting them to the level where they can play for the first team because without that experience and exposure they end up being worth nothing (which is the issue the club have with Randell and Law next season - they really have to play somewhere at a higher enough level to attract interest from transfer paying clubs).
Of course, not ALL players have to fit this model. Some may just be useful assets to the club during the time they are in the squad and via their contributions on the pitch - all of the older pros fall into this category (Edwards, Mayor, Wilson etc) or they may be useful enough squad players who are relatively cheap.
I don't think it makes any difference that Simon Hallett once said that he didn't like transfer fees. He is an astute investor and he will see the logic of the 'Brentford' model but applied at the current Argyle level. And obviously the lower the level that you are playing at the less necessary it is to pay transfer fees to recruit suitable talent because there are far more players of a suitable standard to work with.
