One Game at a Time: A Bridge Too Far?
Leyton Orient (H) August 19th
Played three, lost three. Probably the farthest we have ever been behind Stevenage in either club’s history.
Statistically Argyles worst league start in thirty seasons.
Eight league goals already conceded, several of them eminently avoidable.
No signings for over a month from a team that is in desperate need of reinforcements.
Welcome to mid-August.
None of the above is good, and not even a feel good three two comeback win against the QPR Creche XI in the Water Buffalo Cup is enough compensation for the dire start.
To me, however, the greatest damage is the self-inflicted damage being caused by the anger being exhibited on the terraces, in the stadium and online, by the “supporters”, admittedly a minority, who have turned on players, board and their fellow Argyle fans with a vehemence that in some cases, is shocking.
I, like many on Pasoti, am sufficiently long in the tooth to shrug off the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that assail every club from time to time, and ours more frequently than most. I also recall a time when the result of Argyle on a Saturday could cast a dark cloud over my entire household, such was the grim funk it left me in. That was until my father, a man whose passion for Argyle was entirely responsible for my own, sat me down and pointed out that whilst it was fine for me to be a miserable bar-steward, or somesuch similar wording, because Argyle had lost again, the rest of the family weren’t going to suffer it. And he was and still is right, rest his soul.
No team has a divine right to win all the time. Not even Preston, whose Devine right gave them the lead against Leicester. Remember him?
It may be in part because it was simpler times….Radio 2 Sports report, Grandstand v World Of Sport, Des versus Dickie, the vidiprinter, newspapers including football finals. TV coverage? Match of the Day, The Big Match with Argyle only ever going to feature if they played a big London or Midlands club away, Sportsnight with Coleman on the occasional Wednesday. Live football? The FA Cup Final starting at nine am until the end of extra time and interviews.
The rest was done face to face, At school, work or in the pub. It could still be opinionated. Players still got it in the neck. Brian Johnson, whose major crime appeared to be not being Hugh MacAuley. George Foster nowadays would be “one of our own” but coming through the youth ranks as a striker he suffered a fair bit of stick, before carving a niche as a decent lower league centre back.
I was there for the “Daniels Out” protest after Mike Kelly replaced Tony Waiters and Jimmy Hamilton came back to win a dire game one nil for Carlisle. I may have even been responsible for starting it to a degree. The Sunday Independent back page headline was on my Leigham bedroom wall for many years after I moved away until we cleared the house following the death of my mother. It’s here somewhere.
Then came the internet, Sky TV, the Premier League, the ITV deal and its collapse, Alan Sugar’s prescient prune juice analogy for where the money would go. All seater stadia, the decline of hooliganism and arrival of Kick It Out. Jumpers for goalposts. Ardiles and Villa in 1978 becoming a floodgate of new players from all over the world. Bosman transfers and then transfer windows. Managerial careers measured in months not years and a one club servant being very much the exception.
I am OK with most of what has changed. After all, when I started watching football there was a pecking order, and it hasn’t changed that much. We are still pretty much where we used to be and a win puts a smile on my face, but a defeat will just merge into the many many others that clutter my memory banks.
So, three defeats in a row straight after a relegation is horrible. But I can’t see it is a reason for the bile and bitterness being spewed around on X, at the grounds and even on occasion on here. I am, and remain broadly supportive of the board mainly because they have taken a club that almost went out of existence, and built on the sterling work of James Brent, a man it should be noted who was not a “football man” but who saved our club because he saw it had a community value. Have they made mistakes? You bet. Could they have handled some situations better? Undoubtedly.
I am completely non-religious, but the parable “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” still resonates here with me. I doubt many of us have not had a work moment which impacted others negatively even though we tried our best. Did you then have your client shouting public abuse at you? Or posting opinions of your honesty or integrity on public fora? Or demanding your removal from your post, or today’s beauty, from Pasoti, a demand that your salary should be reduced?
Simon Hallett’s time will be judged best when he has departed. I still fervently hope that is a) not for many years and b) that the current wave of animosity from some has been long forgotten as an aberration. He is by far the best, most competent leader and owner of our club we have ever had. I have never met or spoken to him as I am an exile. When we do get to review his tenure I hope those that are baying for blood today are not regretting their choice because the alternative was worse.
It is a classic conundrum, the footballing chicken and egg. How does a club which isn’t going to lose millions of pounds EVERY SEASON, hope to compete. If you try and replicate what those clubs do, they simply outspend you. If you try and do it differently, then there is a risk it can fail. I can’t remember who said this first. Actually, I can. It was Simon Hallett. At the time we had plummeted back to the lowest level of the League Pyramid, with a tired and unsuitable ground that was effectively used for football twenty-three times a year and nothing much else.
He didn’t promise the moon on a stick. Quite the opposite. He said he could help take the club so far but there would come a point that his funding would not be sufficient, and that he would seek to bring in other investors who, in time, would take on that burden, but his pact with the Argyle community was that he would seek to do so in a way that prevented the club falling back into the problems it had when we last brought in the outside investment “New World”.
So far this has cost him the thick end of £30 million pounds. He has already gone beyond what he said he would put in once. He was faced with a group of investors who came on board, but then jumped ship to a different club with a different roadmap. He filled the hole they left behind.
He has funded a grandstand, and other improvements that mean the club now has revenue all year round. It has hospitality and conference facilities that bring in revenue. It has a waiting list for season tickets. I was there when the crowd was down to 5,000 faithful, and the old joke of “what time does the game start….what time can you get here” wasn’t so much of a joke.
He funded recruitment. Initially at a level that was hardly earth shattering, but for a club that hadn’t paid a fee for yonks, was at least an encouraging sign of life.
He fell on his feet at the expense of another club’s demise when the Bury promotion winning management team, and a good number of their squad traded black pudding for pasties. And again when a Covid truncated season ended at precisely the right time for Argyle to grab a promotion place.
He was decisive when bigger fish (alright, Preston) came calling for his manager, and Schuey was thrust unexpectedly into the limelight. The club had a nascent unity most evident with the “Shoes off if you love Schuey”’ chant at MK Dons. That unity continued despite the devastating defeat by the same MK Dons side, live on Sky at Home Park.
Of course, we all enjoyed winning the two-horse race in which we were considered the dray horse chasing the thoroughbreds of Ipswich and Wednesday. And of course, the message boards were alive with speculation of whether or not we could compete with the spendthrifts of the Championship.
We (he) spent a million pounds on a player, not once but twice, all in a week, a fraction of what the relegated Premier clubs could spend but a fortune for us, to smash our transfer records. We had excitement, late goals, wins we didn’t expect. We had Norwich six-two. We had smiles. We had Nance and Dewsnip and one nils against Rotherham and Leicester. We had Joe 90 winning the final game against Hull City.
And we did it against the odds.
Every season fans think like that. In the Not the Top 20 survey of the Championship over half the clubs had fans who think they have a strong chance of getting promoted. The reality is that only three will, out of 24, and this is a season when HMS PT League is staying firmly in its Sheffield dry dock as its fans have had a dose of reality of what happens when your billionaire saviour decides he is tired of this game and wants to play another…property developer maybe?
In League One, one more side than goes up will go down, leaving seventeen sides in no man’s land of doing it all again. Which in terms of sentiment is kind of what the fans think too. Argyle fans are in the group (or at least were) most confident about going up. No clubs however think they will go down! Four of those are going to be very disappointed.
I understand that the start we have had results in disappointment. Just as I understand that being told we have a top six budget, but then missing out on two separate million pound bids for strikers, plus injuries and suspensions, means we start the season with a thinner squad than ideal.
What I cannot understand is the reversal of attitude amongst some fans that mean that because we were relegated last season(always possible, possibly likely), have lost players (inevitable) and haven’t yet finished building the squad for this season (frustrating), suddenly our board is either lying, incompetent, squirreling money away or should all be removed and replaced with……ah yes, that Dejphon Chanseri might need a new plaything soon…..unfortunately that’s where the anger loses its credibility. The bottomless pit of billionaires who want to toss money down a football drain may have a bottom after all. The considered answer of those who want one owner gone is we should instead have....someone else, but richer. Genius.
Our owners aren’t doing anything they haven’t said they would do. And like any competent business owners they have planned for both success and failure to ensure that the latter doesn’t mean the former is gone forever. Not surprisingly when they make public statements they focus on the outcome they want, which is success.
They have improved our infrastructure and revenues so that even after a relegation we have a much stronger available budget to try and rebuild.
We have signed young players and sold them on for profit. Not just Morgs. We made money on Gillesphey, Scarr, of course Cooper (and will make more eventually), Randell, Hardie and potentially even Talavierov in time. They have explained this strategy multiple times.
And we have mitigated as best we can mis-placed investments in Baidoo and Al Hajj.
We even made money on Lowe, Schumacher and Muslic leaving.
Foulston Park is a community asset that we will benefit from in the long term. It speaks to the heart of what Simon wanted to build when he came to Argyle and helps begin to overcome that look and feel that always existed that Argyle was a club whose facilities were not good enough to sustain Championship or above football. It is a good thing, and not having it would not suddenly release millions of pounds to spend on players. Even if the rules allowed us to. Which they don’t.
Every (and I mean this objectively) outside monitor of football clubs health on a financial sense, rates our club as one of, if not the best run clubs in English football. The measure of a club’s health for me is not how it copes when things go well but how it copes when they go awry.
So yes, Rooney and Foster were wrong appointments, and only one of them in hindsight. Yes, Muslic going the way he did was inevitable but untimely. Cleverley looks a shrewd appointment and has installed a way of playing that, with some additions will change the fortunes experienced so far, at least in this fans eyes. Other opinions are clearly available with added spittle.
No, the recruitment for this season, incomplete as it is, leaves us, along with injuries in a poor state for the current slate of fixtures.
And as a fan, I think, so what. I didn’t look at the fixture list when it came out and think, “well I am going to lose my shinola if we play Lincoln and haven’t bought a statement striker”. Nor will I say, “no way will I want to support the eleven selected by Tom Cleverley against Leyton Orient if player A or B is selected because someone else isn’t fit or available”.
My support is unconditional. That’s what being a supporter is. I can’t get a move to another club. I don’t want to.
I couldn’t ever even dream of pulling on that shirt, but neither would I dream of booing or abusing a player who does because their best efforts on any given day happen to be less than their opponents. It is called competitive sport. I understand gallows humour, but if we learned anything from the last two games it was that there is some fight in this team and surely as a fan you want to see and encourage that. I know mistakes happen, so maybe even get behind the players that make them so that they feel the support.
I saw comments after Saturday that it could get toxic on Tuesday if we go behind again.
Only if the fans let it. Unity is a powerful force.
Imagine you are a player or agent looking at Argyle and you tune in, and the crowd reaction to a setback is a wall of noise in support of their team. Is that a club you want to play for? Full ground, noisy and supportive even when things don’t go their way?
Imagine you want to invest in a club and the owner shows you a video clip with a roaring crowd and says, now imagine what they are like when WE score.
Call it the spirit of Noddy if you like.
Never say die.
Our club through thick and thin.
Semper Fi.
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.S.
Normal OGAAT service will be resumed in time for Blackpool. If however you feel offended by any of the above, and think it is aimed directly at you and your inalienable right to complain or spout nonsense, please do write a reasoned argument as why you are actually correct, print it off and place it in the round filing cabinet by your desk. In the meantime, I am getting on with supporting my club.
Leyton Orient (H) August 19th
Played three, lost three. Probably the farthest we have ever been behind Stevenage in either club’s history.
Statistically Argyles worst league start in thirty seasons.
Eight league goals already conceded, several of them eminently avoidable.
No signings for over a month from a team that is in desperate need of reinforcements.
Welcome to mid-August.
None of the above is good, and not even a feel good three two comeback win against the QPR Creche XI in the Water Buffalo Cup is enough compensation for the dire start.
To me, however, the greatest damage is the self-inflicted damage being caused by the anger being exhibited on the terraces, in the stadium and online, by the “supporters”, admittedly a minority, who have turned on players, board and their fellow Argyle fans with a vehemence that in some cases, is shocking.
I, like many on Pasoti, am sufficiently long in the tooth to shrug off the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that assail every club from time to time, and ours more frequently than most. I also recall a time when the result of Argyle on a Saturday could cast a dark cloud over my entire household, such was the grim funk it left me in. That was until my father, a man whose passion for Argyle was entirely responsible for my own, sat me down and pointed out that whilst it was fine for me to be a miserable bar-steward, or somesuch similar wording, because Argyle had lost again, the rest of the family weren’t going to suffer it. And he was and still is right, rest his soul.
No team has a divine right to win all the time. Not even Preston, whose Devine right gave them the lead against Leicester. Remember him?
It may be in part because it was simpler times….Radio 2 Sports report, Grandstand v World Of Sport, Des versus Dickie, the vidiprinter, newspapers including football finals. TV coverage? Match of the Day, The Big Match with Argyle only ever going to feature if they played a big London or Midlands club away, Sportsnight with Coleman on the occasional Wednesday. Live football? The FA Cup Final starting at nine am until the end of extra time and interviews.
The rest was done face to face, At school, work or in the pub. It could still be opinionated. Players still got it in the neck. Brian Johnson, whose major crime appeared to be not being Hugh MacAuley. George Foster nowadays would be “one of our own” but coming through the youth ranks as a striker he suffered a fair bit of stick, before carving a niche as a decent lower league centre back.
I was there for the “Daniels Out” protest after Mike Kelly replaced Tony Waiters and Jimmy Hamilton came back to win a dire game one nil for Carlisle. I may have even been responsible for starting it to a degree. The Sunday Independent back page headline was on my Leigham bedroom wall for many years after I moved away until we cleared the house following the death of my mother. It’s here somewhere.
Then came the internet, Sky TV, the Premier League, the ITV deal and its collapse, Alan Sugar’s prescient prune juice analogy for where the money would go. All seater stadia, the decline of hooliganism and arrival of Kick It Out. Jumpers for goalposts. Ardiles and Villa in 1978 becoming a floodgate of new players from all over the world. Bosman transfers and then transfer windows. Managerial careers measured in months not years and a one club servant being very much the exception.
I am OK with most of what has changed. After all, when I started watching football there was a pecking order, and it hasn’t changed that much. We are still pretty much where we used to be and a win puts a smile on my face, but a defeat will just merge into the many many others that clutter my memory banks.
So, three defeats in a row straight after a relegation is horrible. But I can’t see it is a reason for the bile and bitterness being spewed around on X, at the grounds and even on occasion on here. I am, and remain broadly supportive of the board mainly because they have taken a club that almost went out of existence, and built on the sterling work of James Brent, a man it should be noted who was not a “football man” but who saved our club because he saw it had a community value. Have they made mistakes? You bet. Could they have handled some situations better? Undoubtedly.
I am completely non-religious, but the parable “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” still resonates here with me. I doubt many of us have not had a work moment which impacted others negatively even though we tried our best. Did you then have your client shouting public abuse at you? Or posting opinions of your honesty or integrity on public fora? Or demanding your removal from your post, or today’s beauty, from Pasoti, a demand that your salary should be reduced?
Simon Hallett’s time will be judged best when he has departed. I still fervently hope that is a) not for many years and b) that the current wave of animosity from some has been long forgotten as an aberration. He is by far the best, most competent leader and owner of our club we have ever had. I have never met or spoken to him as I am an exile. When we do get to review his tenure I hope those that are baying for blood today are not regretting their choice because the alternative was worse.
It is a classic conundrum, the footballing chicken and egg. How does a club which isn’t going to lose millions of pounds EVERY SEASON, hope to compete. If you try and replicate what those clubs do, they simply outspend you. If you try and do it differently, then there is a risk it can fail. I can’t remember who said this first. Actually, I can. It was Simon Hallett. At the time we had plummeted back to the lowest level of the League Pyramid, with a tired and unsuitable ground that was effectively used for football twenty-three times a year and nothing much else.
He didn’t promise the moon on a stick. Quite the opposite. He said he could help take the club so far but there would come a point that his funding would not be sufficient, and that he would seek to bring in other investors who, in time, would take on that burden, but his pact with the Argyle community was that he would seek to do so in a way that prevented the club falling back into the problems it had when we last brought in the outside investment “New World”.
So far this has cost him the thick end of £30 million pounds. He has already gone beyond what he said he would put in once. He was faced with a group of investors who came on board, but then jumped ship to a different club with a different roadmap. He filled the hole they left behind.
He has funded a grandstand, and other improvements that mean the club now has revenue all year round. It has hospitality and conference facilities that bring in revenue. It has a waiting list for season tickets. I was there when the crowd was down to 5,000 faithful, and the old joke of “what time does the game start….what time can you get here” wasn’t so much of a joke.
He funded recruitment. Initially at a level that was hardly earth shattering, but for a club that hadn’t paid a fee for yonks, was at least an encouraging sign of life.
He fell on his feet at the expense of another club’s demise when the Bury promotion winning management team, and a good number of their squad traded black pudding for pasties. And again when a Covid truncated season ended at precisely the right time for Argyle to grab a promotion place.
He was decisive when bigger fish (alright, Preston) came calling for his manager, and Schuey was thrust unexpectedly into the limelight. The club had a nascent unity most evident with the “Shoes off if you love Schuey”’ chant at MK Dons. That unity continued despite the devastating defeat by the same MK Dons side, live on Sky at Home Park.
Of course, we all enjoyed winning the two-horse race in which we were considered the dray horse chasing the thoroughbreds of Ipswich and Wednesday. And of course, the message boards were alive with speculation of whether or not we could compete with the spendthrifts of the Championship.
We (he) spent a million pounds on a player, not once but twice, all in a week, a fraction of what the relegated Premier clubs could spend but a fortune for us, to smash our transfer records. We had excitement, late goals, wins we didn’t expect. We had Norwich six-two. We had smiles. We had Nance and Dewsnip and one nils against Rotherham and Leicester. We had Joe 90 winning the final game against Hull City.
And we did it against the odds.
Every season fans think like that. In the Not the Top 20 survey of the Championship over half the clubs had fans who think they have a strong chance of getting promoted. The reality is that only three will, out of 24, and this is a season when HMS PT League is staying firmly in its Sheffield dry dock as its fans have had a dose of reality of what happens when your billionaire saviour decides he is tired of this game and wants to play another…property developer maybe?
In League One, one more side than goes up will go down, leaving seventeen sides in no man’s land of doing it all again. Which in terms of sentiment is kind of what the fans think too. Argyle fans are in the group (or at least were) most confident about going up. No clubs however think they will go down! Four of those are going to be very disappointed.
I understand that the start we have had results in disappointment. Just as I understand that being told we have a top six budget, but then missing out on two separate million pound bids for strikers, plus injuries and suspensions, means we start the season with a thinner squad than ideal.
What I cannot understand is the reversal of attitude amongst some fans that mean that because we were relegated last season(always possible, possibly likely), have lost players (inevitable) and haven’t yet finished building the squad for this season (frustrating), suddenly our board is either lying, incompetent, squirreling money away or should all be removed and replaced with……ah yes, that Dejphon Chanseri might need a new plaything soon…..unfortunately that’s where the anger loses its credibility. The bottomless pit of billionaires who want to toss money down a football drain may have a bottom after all. The considered answer of those who want one owner gone is we should instead have....someone else, but richer. Genius.
Our owners aren’t doing anything they haven’t said they would do. And like any competent business owners they have planned for both success and failure to ensure that the latter doesn’t mean the former is gone forever. Not surprisingly when they make public statements they focus on the outcome they want, which is success.
They have improved our infrastructure and revenues so that even after a relegation we have a much stronger available budget to try and rebuild.
We have signed young players and sold them on for profit. Not just Morgs. We made money on Gillesphey, Scarr, of course Cooper (and will make more eventually), Randell, Hardie and potentially even Talavierov in time. They have explained this strategy multiple times.
And we have mitigated as best we can mis-placed investments in Baidoo and Al Hajj.
We even made money on Lowe, Schumacher and Muslic leaving.
Foulston Park is a community asset that we will benefit from in the long term. It speaks to the heart of what Simon wanted to build when he came to Argyle and helps begin to overcome that look and feel that always existed that Argyle was a club whose facilities were not good enough to sustain Championship or above football. It is a good thing, and not having it would not suddenly release millions of pounds to spend on players. Even if the rules allowed us to. Which they don’t.
Every (and I mean this objectively) outside monitor of football clubs health on a financial sense, rates our club as one of, if not the best run clubs in English football. The measure of a club’s health for me is not how it copes when things go well but how it copes when they go awry.
So yes, Rooney and Foster were wrong appointments, and only one of them in hindsight. Yes, Muslic going the way he did was inevitable but untimely. Cleverley looks a shrewd appointment and has installed a way of playing that, with some additions will change the fortunes experienced so far, at least in this fans eyes. Other opinions are clearly available with added spittle.
No, the recruitment for this season, incomplete as it is, leaves us, along with injuries in a poor state for the current slate of fixtures.
And as a fan, I think, so what. I didn’t look at the fixture list when it came out and think, “well I am going to lose my shinola if we play Lincoln and haven’t bought a statement striker”. Nor will I say, “no way will I want to support the eleven selected by Tom Cleverley against Leyton Orient if player A or B is selected because someone else isn’t fit or available”.
My support is unconditional. That’s what being a supporter is. I can’t get a move to another club. I don’t want to.
I couldn’t ever even dream of pulling on that shirt, but neither would I dream of booing or abusing a player who does because their best efforts on any given day happen to be less than their opponents. It is called competitive sport. I understand gallows humour, but if we learned anything from the last two games it was that there is some fight in this team and surely as a fan you want to see and encourage that. I know mistakes happen, so maybe even get behind the players that make them so that they feel the support.
I saw comments after Saturday that it could get toxic on Tuesday if we go behind again.
Only if the fans let it. Unity is a powerful force.
Imagine you are a player or agent looking at Argyle and you tune in, and the crowd reaction to a setback is a wall of noise in support of their team. Is that a club you want to play for? Full ground, noisy and supportive even when things don’t go their way?
Imagine you want to invest in a club and the owner shows you a video clip with a roaring crowd and says, now imagine what they are like when WE score.
Call it the spirit of Noddy if you like.
Never say die.
Our club through thick and thin.
Semper Fi.
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
P.S.
Normal OGAAT service will be resumed in time for Blackpool. If however you feel offended by any of the above, and think it is aimed directly at you and your inalienable right to complain or spout nonsense, please do write a reasoned argument as why you are actually correct, print it off and place it in the round filing cabinet by your desk. In the meantime, I am getting on with supporting my club.
