Lowe - "We're overachieving ...............

[Biggs]

It depends how you're defining over achievement. In terms of club size, we aren't overachieving, we're probably about where we should be in that regard, but in terms of our current budget, we definitely are.

Exactly, expressed much better than my post

 

[HerthaBSC]

None of that stuff matters if a smaller club has a bigger budget. Which they may have as a result of a wealthier owner, parachute payments, bigger non-matchday income or simply a more reckless board or owner.

I'd partly agree there's no reason we shouldn't be up there though, for the reasons you listed plus being smarter than most of those clubs with bigger budgets.

As a Club, we have developed a 'USP' over the years, and that is our prudent application of limited resources, or 'over achiement'

Looking back to the Dave Smith era, when we almost achieved promotion to the old League 1 (now Premiership) on extremely limited resources. An achievement not way off Leicester's success in the Premiership.

Also demonstrated this season in our defeats of Sheff Weds, Ipswich, and near victory over Pompey.. all have much bigger budgets than us.

To decry this historic overachiement, and cite it as a reason for a drop in form is just defeatism.

 

[Knibbsworth]

So not actually nonsense then.

Of course it is nonsense, there’s a reason Manchester United don’t have to worry about non-league football and why Plymouth Parkway aren’t 3 time European Champions.

A club can spend its budget better or more intelligently, but the original quote was “It makes little difference what the size of the budget is, it's how you spend it”.

Budget makes little difference? It makes a monumental difference.

If money made little difference, half of the biggest spending clubs in every division would finish bottom half, and half of the lowest budget clubs would finish in the top 10. It is far more likely that the biggest spending clubs finish towards the top and the lowest spending clubs at the bottom.

If a big budget club is hurtling towards bottom half they change the manager, or makes funds available, or do whatever it takes to turn it around. If a low budget club is in the relegation zone, they mostly keep going with the same manager and players and hope things turn around because that’s all they can afford to do.

There is a ceiling as to how high Lowe can take Argyle, and he is aware of it. He has referred several times to himself being ambitious, but also a realist as to how far he can take Argyle.

You can’t just say money is of little relevance in football, that is blatantly not true.

 

[Sainghin Green]

I'm not sure about under or over achievement. There's just achievement. It doesn't matter how you dress it up. If Argyle get promoted it's hardly going to matter how their progress was labelled en route. The pleasure will be the same. Surprising or unexpected doesn't mean over-achieving. This thread has been Pasoti at its best.

 

[Knibbsworth]

Interesting. So we ARE underachieving

History won’t drag us up the table. The only criteria we can judge Lowe on is how much he has to spend on his squad, and how much every other manager has.
That is the key criteria as to what club is ‘overachieving’ and ‘underachieving’.

 

[Green Flash]

It would be disappointing if we do not have a budget to compete realistically in the top half of league one and be in the play off mix given our revenue must be top 6 or 7 and we have £6m in cash in the bank. Just saying.

 

[Keith Whitfield]

Spot on Mr Knibbsworth. The overwhelming evidence is that a club's financial resource is by far the biggest contributor to their success over the long term. Also agree, Doc, that it's about more than just population size, but that's of lesser importance. That we are the largest city never to have had a club in the top flight is not mainly down to Plymouth's poverty vis a vis city's of similar/smaller size (that cuts both ways and is possibly more in our favour than the reverse). The main causes of that are anyone's guess, but I'd nail my colours to the mast of poor management from the boardroom, something I believe we have recently overcome.

But that's not what Ryan Lowe is on about, anyway. He's talking about his five year plan to get Argyle into the Championship. At this stage he expected to be mid-table, so top of the league was "over-achieving," as is the current position.

Anyone who wants to learn about this evidence should read The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know about Football is Wrong by Chris Anderson and David Sally. A great read for anyone who really wants to know what makes football click.

 

[Pogleswoody]

Remember lots of those cities have multiple clubs though, and there are smaller cities with undoubtedly bigger clubs historically (Wolves and Sunderland off the top off my head). Not to mention all the well-trodden stuff about poor transport links etc. So it's not quite that simple.

Wolverhampton roughly the same population as Plymouth? Sunderland 100k larger?

 

[ghost of hughie reed]

I don't think you can only look at the size of the place or the crowd size etc. You also have to look at the location and the money available in that location. Plymouth is a relatively remote, relatively poor city. It lacks well paid jobs. It's not a place where money flows, development happens etc. There is far more business, and so money, around most of the big(ger) northern cities. Even somewhere like Norwich which is, arguably, also relatively remote is MUCH closer to London and the east Midlands - that proximity means there is more wealth around the area. It's quite hard to identify a comparable place to act as a benchmark to compare with. Carlisle is perhaps similarly remote (although it's on the way to other larger places) but it is MUCH smaller. Swansea might make for a good comparison but I suspect that south Wales has benefited from much more inward investment in the last 30+ years as the coal and steel industries have waned. In the past, football finances were primarily about crowd sizes and playing squads were much more local so location was much less of a factor but now they are really all about external money and then TV revenues once the external money takes a club to the top level. I think we're probably in about the right place (but lower where we used to be when external money was not such a big factor in the game).

Plymouth average wage is a bit above the national average.
I think you would be right about it being an underinvested area relative to other places though.

Office for National Statistics calculator.

highest and lowest earning places in UK
( who'd have thunk Worthing would be one of Britains poorest towns ? }

Something I notice with Wigan, they took 700 away. Before they spent a few years in the prem they would have been lucky to see 700 at home. OK i exaggerate, they played in front of about 2500 if I recall correctly, but you get my point, if we can play at a higher level we will end up increasing our fan base longer term.

Clearly as evidenced above, neither wages or the mistaken idea that Plymouth is a poor area are holding back the club or its attendances, so it is either there is not sufficient interest in football in the area, which I dont believe, or we have been stymied by generational underachievement, which I do believe to be the case.
edited tuesday

 

[HerthaBSC]

Spot on Mr Knibbsworth. The overwhelming evidence is that a club's financial resource is by far the biggest contributor to their success over the long term. Also agree, Doc, that it's about more than just population size, but that's of lesser importance. That we are the largest city never to have had a club in the top flight is not mainly down to Plymouth's poverty vis a vis city's of similar/smaller size (that cuts both ways and is possibly more in our favour than the reverse). The main causes of that are anyone's guess, but I'd nail my colours to the mast of poor management from the boardroom, something I believe we have recently overcome.

But that's not what Ryan Lowe is on about, anyway. He's talking about his five year plan to get Argyle into the Championship. At this stage he expected to be mid-table, so top of the league was "over-achieving," as is the current position.

Anyone who wants to learn about this evidence should read The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know about Football is Wrong by Chris Anderson and David Sally. A great read for anyone who really wants to know what makes football click.

Argyle's most successful period was under the Chairmanship of the late Pete Bloom between 1985 and 1991. An era of very limited resources for signings, and of significant 'over achievement'

For the entire period under Bloom, Argyle were in the Championship.

 

[Alan Turing]

…well for most of it, anyway.

An excellent chairman. Now, we have another.

 

[warney]

Argyle's most successful period was under the Chairmanship of the late Pete Bloom between 1985 and 1991. An era of very limited resources for signings, and of significant 'over achievement'

For the entire period under Bloom, Argyle were in the Championship.

There was a lot less money floating around the game then, though, so a well run club with fairly limited resources had a chance of competing at the sharp end. These days, with TV money, huge sponsorship deals and mega-rich foreign investors there's little chance of a club in our current situation getting anywhere near the Premiership let alone top half Championship.

 

[HerthaBSC]

…well for most of it, anyway.

An excellent chairman. Now, we have another.

Yes, Pete Bloom was the perfect Chairman for that era. And we're very lucky to have Mr Hallett at the helm now.

 

[fishypilgrim]

It can't be all about budget though can it. Otherwise any tom , dick or oli could manage Manchester United. There has to be an element of coaching ability in the mix. A good coach works with what they have and moulds them into a competitive team ( say Shaun Dyche for example or John Coleman ). Hopefully behind closed doors Ryan Lowe is not telling the players that they are over achieving. My gripe is that we play the same way week in week out and have done for 3 seasons ( with some rare exceptions) . Good coaches with good players will work out how to beat that system which is what has happened in the last 3 weeks . Indeed other teams may have also succeeded but we got out of jail slightly in some games that I can think of.

 

[HerthaBSC]

There was a lot less money floating around the game then, though, so a well run club with fairly limited resources had a chance of competing at the sharp end. These days, with TV money, huge sponsorship deals and mega-rich foreign investors there's little chance of a club in our current situation getting anywhere near the Premiership let alone top half Championship.

Yes, you're quite right.

But there are still Clubs that stand out these days, achieving consistently beyond their expenditure; Burnley, Leicester, Wycombe. Barnsley, Morecombe, Accrington, to name a few.

And those that under perform relative to attendances and expenditure; Bradford and Sunderland are the big stand outs on that list.

Considered only as a business, there is probably an optimum league position for profitability, and we have probably reached that where we are in League 1; high income from big attendances, relatively lower salaries and other expenditure.

Certainly, on a business only model, the attractions of the Championship are limited, bearing in mind that very few Championship clubs are profitable.

There's certainly going to be a challenge moving to the next level.

Would certainly require an increased budget and consistent over achievement from our players, productive additional income streams and tactical knowledge and application on the pitch.

We have everything in place to achieve this apart from addition non football income.

And, it's this that now dictates that we are 'not ready' for the top of the league or thoughts of promotion.

The hope is that heads of key individuals are not turned before we have these final pieces of the jigsaw in place.