Daily Mail article on Argyle

[davie nine]

It seems that we have now found yet another shade of green in that photo of Jephcott and Hardie.

 

[Redruth Boy]

Shock horror! For the first time in history the Daily Mail tells the truth!

 

[PL2 3DQ]

A good article, winning football attracts the media and there's a definite feel good factor around the club at the moment, helped by a bunch of players the fans can relate to and get behind - a real team rather than a group of individuals.

The article could have also mentioned the excellent two way communication between the club and fans. The Fans Forum and matchday feedback are just two examples.
The club is trying its best to iron out the niggles the fans have raised.

I may be way off but I think at the start of the season the club focused too much on the corporate side of the fanbase plus the need to squeeze the 'normal' fan for more and more money but thankfully that has been toned down.

 

[Mark Smith]

Not sure I like that “big club, no ambition“ line. It‘s the kind of trite assumption typical of football people who know little about us or our history. “Sleeping giant”, anyone?

It “gives“ on the one hand by assuming we are a big club - we’re not: it’s reasonable to say that we’re currently punching below our weight, but we’re not top-table big - and it “takes“ on the other hand by assuming we’ve had no ambition. We’ve always had ambition, thanks very much, and it’s a poor assumption that because we’ve not made it big it’s been because of apathy.

Not much thought went into that one-liner and I’m surprised Hallett was impressed by it. Fortunately, though, Lowe has done his talking on the pitch, far more impressive.

 

[Biggs]

Shock horror! For the first time in history the Daily Mail tells the truth!

Couple of slight inaccuracies… Parkinson didn’t leave Liverpool for us, for example. But yes, good article.

 

[jimsing]

We are NOT a big Club, but we could have been, had we taken our opportunities in the past.

With a huge catchment area, we COULD be a big club still, but the opportunity door is slowly closing (in fact it may have closed already), as the Premiership close ranks and take all the money out of the game, leaving very little for the rest of us to try to play catch-up with. There is more risk than reward these days.

Simon Hallett has it right. The Club is run the right way, but what of other owners? Are they really fit to own a Football Club?

We have ambition (to get and to stay in the Championship) but we do not, and might never get, any ambition to realistically get further up the ladder. The Premiership have made sure that will be the case.

Are the FA to blame? Maybe, but they want to have the best league in the world. Is the FL to blame? Maybe, but did they have any choice to agree to the Premiership demands?

The Premiership now hold all the cards.

When we get to the Championship, and we have been there before, many times, let's hope we can stay there this time.

 

[Lesley Somerville]

Interesting that when Ryan Lowe was first asked by Simon Hallett what he thought of Argyle, his response was, "Big club, no ambition".

Wonder what led him to have that view? I mean obviously we've never really achieved anything of note, but that doesn't mean we haven't tried. It can only be that he didn't see us as big spenders, but we aren't that now so I'm not sure what's changed his mind.

Maybe he'd seen the Victorian style 'facilities' in the old Mayflower? The general air of decline and tattiness? The lack of backroom staff and professionalism? I'd say he was spot on.

 

[davie nine]

We are NOT a big Club, but we could have been, had we taken our opportunities in the past.

With a huge catchment area, we COULD be a big club still, but the opportunity door is slowly closing (in fact it may have closed already), as the Premiership close ranks and take all the money out of the game, leaving very little for the rest of us to try to play catch-up with. There is more risk than reward these days.

Simon Hallett has it right. The Club is run the right way, but what of other owners? Are they really fit to own a Football Club?

We have ambition (to get and to stay in the Championship) but we do not, and might never get, any ambition to realistically get further up the ladder. The Premiership have made sure that will be the case.

Are the FA to blame? Maybe, but they want to have the best league in the world. Is the FL to blame? Maybe, but did they have any choice to agree to the Premiership demands?

The Premiership now hold all the cards.

When we get to the Championship, and we have been there before, many times, let's hope we can stay there this time.

I don’t understand the implication that we only need to consolidate in the Championship.
Any club with a competitive manager and players would, surely, aspire to reaching the Premier League.
SH has clearly stated that he would not be able to afford to lead us into the Premier League.
I am not sure what would happen if we found ourselves in the top 6 with, say, 10 games to go in a season.
I would be very happy for SH to remain our owner, using the current sustainability strategy, and just see where it takes us. We would not be the first club to come straight back down and we wouldn’t be the last but at least we would have been there.
Neil Dewsnip would certainly want to go for it as he explained at Senior Greens.

 

[jimsing]

"If" is a big word, Davie.

Of course we should 'go for it' if we ever got to that position, but look what happened when Holloway got us up to that position. We couldn't keep paying those types of wages for the players who got us there, and I don't think Hallett would ever allow it to happen, so I don't think your hypothetical situation will arise.

 

[foreigner]

I don’t understand the implication that we only need to consolidate in the Championship.
Any club with a competitive manager and players would, surely, aspire to reaching the Premier League.
SH has clearly stated that he would not be able to afford to lead us into the Premier League.
I am not sure what would happen if we found ourselves in the top 6 with, say, 10 games to go in a season.
I would be very happy for SH to remain our owner, using the current sustainability strategy, and just see where it takes us. We would not be the first club to come straight back down and we wouldn’t be the last but at least we would have been there.
Neil Dewsnip would certainly want to go for it as he explained at Senior Greens.

Exactly. It's aiming low and that's exactly where we'd get. You should always aim for the stars.

 

[The Doctor]

Meant to add too, I don’t think it’s a question of lack of ambition it’s more a lack of money. There isn’t and never has been any real big money down here. Even Simon’s resources are finite. Although having said that when I moved back down to Plymouth from London a former boss of mine said “the Westcountry is the graveyard of ambition”. It was always true in my era you had to move away to achieve it which I did.

I’ve heard that ‘graveyard of ambition’ line quoted about Plymouth but I’m pretty sure it was originally said/written about Swansea by the writer/poet Dylan Thomas.

 

[Antipodean]

It may well be true that at that time Plymouth fell under West Devon Council. But where do you think they got ther money from to educate Janners and send some of them to university?

If you read my post with a modicum of care you would have seen that I mentioned West Devon Education Authority not Council, and that the money came from different tiers of government including central, which has a national funding base. Counties also raised and received some money at that time. So in the light of that repeated information you can answer your own question - some of it came from Plymouth rate and tax payers, and some of it didn't.

 

[Antipodean]

A decent piece by the Mail - never thought I'd say that! Yes, it plays a bit fast and loose with the facts in places, and can't resist that Daily Mail spin, but it does a good job for Argyle and Plymouth. Think Mr H over-does the negative self-portrait a bit. Yes, he earns his money from playing the capitalist money game but "cold-blooded, capitalist pig", not from what I've seen. More highly rational in matters of business, I'd say. Very liberal in terms of social matters too.

I'd also disagree with Ryan Lowe about lack of ambition. The ambition has been there - even McCauley and the group that almost took us out of business had that. What was lacking was a coherent plan to support that ambition. The data-analytical approach that Mr H has brought into the club gives us that, alongside some financial backing. However, to fully achieve the goal of Championship sustainability the people of Plymouth and the greater Argyle diaspora need to buy into this vision. So far, so good. But will it last when fortune turns its back on us, as it will inevitably do.

(Written by someone who also benefitted from the municipal generosity of the same era as Mr H, and is trying to give something back - in a much more modest way. My route was via Devonport High School, and there was also an edge between us and the Plymouth College lot! But I'll forgive Mr H for making the wrong choice back in the 60s.)

Boniface's wouldn't let us play the gentleman's game played by hooligans, Keith, so we had to organise our own pick up games in the shadow of Home Park. So it was the hooligan's game played by gentlemen officially, and quite often against Devonport High. We won some but I recall that you won more, notably a closely fought final at Beacon Park that broke my teenage heart.

 

[Antipodean]

Depends on when he went to school and university, due to the various Local Government reorganisations, so that prior to 1974 it would have been funded solely by Plymouth ratepayers, if between 1974 and 1996 it would have been funded from the ratepayers/community charge/council tax payers of all of Devon which included Plymouth, the student grant system was administered by the west Devon area committee of DCC, after 1996 it would again been just the Council tax payers of Plymouth City.

As previously explained, not so HC Green. We are talking about the late sixties and early seventies, and contributions to fees and maintenance grants were made by all tiers of government, while being administered at the local level.

 

[Antipodean]

Lets hope so, and at a PASALB meeting a couple of years ago before lockdown Ryan Lowe was asked the same question on first impressions of Argyle. Same answer, 'Big club, no ambition'. It's not that we haven't tried, it's just that when we get to the upper reaches of the 2nd tier we haven't been able to get over the line to the top tier for whatever reason. Love the current set up at Argyle at the moment and came up to Morecambe yesterday. A good night out in the Broadwalk!! ps I was also at Boniface ('67 to' '74)

A year behind me, Swaz. Plenty of Argyle fans went to that school. Very handy for Home Park in the Beacon Park days. I think the only closer secondary school to the Theatre of Greens was Devonport High School for Girls in Lyndhurst Road. Bonnies used to be geographically close both to Albion and Argyle.