Brent interview in Brent Herald (Not click bail on ATD)

Plymouth Argyle chairman James Brent on why financial sustainability is the way forward

Brent believes rugby union's Exeter Chiefs are a good role model for the Pilgrims to copy

Plymouth Argyle chairman James Brent remains committed to his goal of building a successful but financially sustainable club.

The Pilgrims are bottom of League One, with only five points and eight goals from 12 games at the start of this season after they were promoted last term.

It has been a shock to the system for everyone at Home Park, but Brent is determined that Argyle will not spend money they do not have.

He is a firm advocate of investing in the club’s infrastructure to generate additional revenue.

His plans for an extended and revamped Grandstand at Home Park, as part of a wider development project at Higher Home Park, are an example of that.

However, that does not sit well with some supporters who would rather extra funds were injected into the playing budget.

Those critics argue he is more interested in his development plans than the football.
In an interview with Herald Sport, Brent reaffirmed his position when it came to the financial side of Argyle and the future.

He said: “The ambition of the board this season is to have a squad that competes well in League One.

“We have a really good manager and coaching team, and we have a core squad that we believe should compete well in League One.

“The Championship is a very expensive place to be. It’s an expensive place potentially to get to.

“The current infrastructure of the club would not sustain it in the Championship over a period of time.

“We have been very clear from day one, and both Simon Hallett and John Morgan are totally aligned to this, that we want to be a sustainable football club where we put money into infrastructure to generate revenues.

“That will enable us to put more back into the football team, but not to be in a position where if the shareholders stopped providing financial support the club gets into financial difficulties.

“Now, in the Championship and a large part of the Premier League, that is not the model that is followed.

“At some time in the future it may be that model does change for Argyle, but the opinion of the current board is that it is the right approach for Plymouth Argyle Football Club.

Brent believes the financial model that Argyle are working to can deliver long-term success and used Exeter Chiefs, the English rugby union champions, as an example.

He said: “I don’t accept, if I’m totally frank, that a well-run sustainable football club can’t go higher than people think it can go.

“I point people to the Exeter Chiefs, which is a wonderful example.

“I appreciate the shape of the ball is wrong but the principle is absolutely right where they generate, as I understand it, £16.5 million of income, the majority of which comes from Sandy Park, not from RFU distributions or match-day ticket sales.

“They, as I understand it again, made a profit last year having won the English Premiership.
 
“So it’s not just a dream. There is a model where if you run a club well, if you invest well in the infrastructure and you generate additional revenues you can grow the club to a higher level than people would necessarily believe you would be able to achieve.”

Argyle increased their turnover by 31 per cent to £6.2 million for the financial year ending December 31, 2016.

That generated earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation of £757,000.

Brent said: “The financial position of the club has improved each year since the exit from administration (in 2011). The supporter base has increased each year.

“The biggest step change for us will be, hopefully, to get a new grandstand which I strongly believe won’t just service existing supporters.

“It will attract further supporters to the club that don’t currently come, which I think is really important.”

Argyle’s playing budget this season, and how competitive it is compared to other League One clubs, has been a topic of much discussion among the Green Army.


Brent did not want to be drawn into specifics about it, but gave an indication of the club’s approach since promotion was secured last season.

He said: “What we want to do is to make sure the club spends what it receives, and does not over-spend.

“Getting promoted is a quite expensive game even at this level because you have player bonuses and such like.

“So there was a cost of promotion, which we were delighted to pay I hasten to add.

“We materially increased the player budget to reflect the move up in league, so that has an impact as well.

“I’m not going to say what our budget is, but the increase is materially greater than the increase in the central distributions from the EFL.”

When asked about the budget he basically ignored the question. He is the source of all Argyle bullshit, he doesn't get football hence his constant referencing of chiefs. He also doesn't get that Chiefs provide things like staff in turnstiles and refreshment vendors. I saw a mate of mine yesterday that used to go to Argyle regularly when asked if he was still going he said and I quote "£23 to stand in the rain for half an hour to get into the ground then I didn't have time to get a cup of hot chocolate before the game because of the queues."
Brent will learn how sustainable starving the team of funds is next season when they have half the crowds they do now.

Haven't the chiefs spent millions on their team / infrastructure / stadium? Comparing the two is stretching it beyond a pisstake.....wake me up when this nightmare is over.

If it was as simple as bolting in facking great conference facilities to guarantee mega income, every club would find the investment to do it. How much conferencing in our part of the world does he think actually happens? Bolting on facilities doesn’t generate EXTRA conferencing. What it does, at best, is DILUTE the existing amount that Chiefs generate. Even if we matched their facilities regionally, would companies want to come to the English Rugby champs, or to a (soon to be) 4th division rank amateur circus?

Les Miserable wrote:

Haven't the chiefs spent millions on their team / infrastructure / stadium? Comparing the two is stretching it beyond a pisstake.....wake me up when this nightmare is over.

Has anybody ever seen any quotes from the chiefs stating that they've climbed to the top of the Prem on one of the lowest budgets in the league? It's obvious they haven't it's how they have built a team capable of doing what they've done.

His reasoning might be sound if he had actually invested anything in the club infrastructure but he hasn’t....in fact, even when the opportunity to do so was handed to him on a Hallett-shaped plate he’s managed to feck it up by muddying it with his own plans for selfish gain.

Absolutely the reason why this idiot is not fit to run a football club.

Nothing wrong with manageable debt in the football world, ffs every single club in the premier league probably runs with a manageable debt level.

Feck off Brent.

Czarcasm wrote:

If it was as simple as bolting in facking great conference facilities to guarantee mega income, every club would find the investment to do it. How much conferencing in our part of the world does he think actually happens? Bolting on facilities doesn’t generate EXTRA conferencing. What it does, is DILUTE the amount that Chiefs would be getting. Even if we matched their facilities regionally, would companies want to come to the English Rugby champs, or to a (soon to be) 4th division rank amateur circus?

All this corporate bullshit should anger the Argo faithfull who fill the terraces, I know it does me. There are more than 90% more terrace scum than there are Prawn sarnie munchers of whom I would say less than ten percent of manage to buy a cup of instant coffee from a cardboard cup with powdered milk for a cost of about £4. In the prawn sandwich dispensary you get filter coffee in a real cup For fifty pence with free feckin refills and they bring it to your table FFS! I gave up my season ticket seat four seasons ago with one big deciding factor being the leak right over my head that had been there for at least 3 years. When I went to a game last season and sat in block 15 I see they still haven't fixed the FOOKIN leak!
Brent has treated the lifeblood of the club with contempt, maybe all the directors should pick a well attended home game and try it from our point of view as a potd fan. First spend all evening trying to buy ticket online or get through the phone queues, then take four hours off work to buy your ticket whilst standing in a rain soaked pot holed car park being gurned at by volunteer Nool. Then on the day go and stand in rain again for half an hour trying to get in said ground, don't bother with refreshments there isn't time. Go and sit in your seat under the leak, sustainable model my hairy feckin arse.

Hard to tell if Newell or Brent is the most stupid in the spectacular own goal articles.....
Errington if you're reading this seeing you're in his back pocket FFS commission a decent photo of the twat sick of the acne spotty red efforts you keep reproducing puts me right off my brunch

Somebody ought to link it in on JBSOTI......

Just fcuk the fcuk off, Brent.

Tgwu wrote:

Plymouth Argyle chairman James Brent on why financial sustainability is the way forward

Brent believes rugby union's Exeter Chiefs are a good role model for the Pilgrims to copy

The Exeter Chiefs invest heavily in their team. We do not.

Plymouth Argyle chairman James Brent remains committed to his goal of building a successful but financially sustainable club.

Plymouth Argyle is currently bottom of the division.

The Pilgrims are bottom of League One, with only five points and eight goals from 12 games at the start of this season after they were promoted last term.

It has been a shock to the system for everyone at Home Park, but Brent is determined that Argyle will not spend money they do not have.

Brent is just determined not to spend any money at all.

He is a firm advocate of investing in the club’s infrastructure to generate additional revenue.

Who isn't?

His plans for an extended and revamped Grandstand at Home Park, as part of a wider development project at Higher Home Park, are an example of that.

That's opinion not fact.

However, that does not sit well with some supporters who would rather extra funds were injected into the playing budget.

"Sufficient funds" would be more accurate.

Those critics argue he is more interested in his development plans than the football.

That's fact not opinion.

In an interview with Herald Sport, Brent reaffirmed his position when it came to the financial side of Argyle and the future.

This is not an interview it is a press release. And a crappy one at that.

He said: “The ambition of the board this season is to have a squad that competes well in League One.

The club is failing according to its own success criteria.

“We have a really good manager and coaching team, and we have a core squad that we believe should compete well in League One.

Why are we bottom then? Is it your fault?

“The Championship is a very expensive place to be. It’s an expensive place potentially to get to.

We are heading down not up. The CCC is a pipe dream right now.

“The current infrastructure of the club would not sustain it in the Championship over a period of time.

Or even a year in Div 1 by the looks of it.

“We have been very clear from day one, and both Simon Hallett and John Morgan are totally aligned to this, that we want to be a sustainable football club where we put money into infrastructure to generate revenues.

Again... who doesn't?

“That will enable us to put more back into the football team, but not to be in a position where if the shareholders stopped providing financial support the club gets into financial difficulties.

If the plan is to recycle income into the team why isn't it happening right now?

“Now, in the Championship and a large part of the Premier League, that is not the model that is followed.

No shit, Sherlock.

“At some time in the future it may be that model does change for Argyle, but the opinion of the current board is that it is the right approach for Plymouth Argyle Football Club.

The you have taken as far as you can. Please sell up and go.

Brent believes the financial model that Argyle are working to can deliver long-term success and used Exeter Chiefs, the English rugby union champions, as an example.

"Champions" being a rather significant word here.


He said: “I don’t accept, if I’m totally frank, that a well-run sustainable football club can’t go higher than people think it can go.

This is just gobbledygook.

“I point people to the Exeter Chiefs, which is a wonderful example.

They wouldn't be if you were in charge.

“I appreciate the shape of the ball is wrong but the principle is absolutely right where they generate, as I understand it, £16.5 million of income, the majority of which comes from Sandy Park, not from RFU distributions or match-day ticket sales.

This is plain wrong. Rugby income £15m; Catering etc £1.5m. That's income not profit. Brent is lying to us and the Herald is providing with the platform and not challenging the lie.

“They, as I understand it again, made a profit last year having won the English Premiership.

No shit, Sherlock is back.
 
“So it’s not just a dream. There is a model where if you run a club well, if you invest well in the infrastructure and you generate additional revenues you can grow the club to a higher level than people would necessarily believe you would be able to achieve.”

They can. You can't. There is nothing in your history to suggest that you are the man to deliver this.

Argyle increased their turnover by 31 per cent to £6.2 million for the financial year ending December 31, 2016.

But not the team budget.

That generated earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation of £757,000.

So where is it?

Brent said: “The financial position of the club has improved each year since the exit from administration (in 2011). The supporter base has increased each year.

We've done our bit. When will you?

“The biggest step change for us will be, hopefully, to get a new grandstand which I strongly believe won’t just service existing supporters.

It is not a new grandstand. It is the old one renovated.

“It will attract further supporters to the club that don’t currently come, which I think is really important.”

Not to watch the current team it won't.

Argyle’s playing budget this season, and how competitive it is compared to other League One clubs, has been a topic of much discussion among the Green Army.

This is good. I'm all ears.


Brent did not want to be drawn into specifics about it, of course not but gave an indication of the club’s approach since promotion was secured last season.

He said: “What we want to do is to make sure the club spends what it receives, and does not over-spend.

But we aren't, are we?

“Getting promoted is a quite expensive game even at this level because you have player bonuses and such like.

Getting relegated is more expensive.

“So there was a cost of promotion, which we were delighted to pay I hasten to add.

Naturally

“We materially increased the player budget to reflect the move up in league, so that has an impact as well.

How much is "materially"?

“I’m not going to say what our budget is no because you'd be run out of town, but the increase is materially greater than the increase in the central distributions from the EFL.”

What does that even mean? Is it a percentage or is it an absolute amount? It's just meaningless.

I'd say this is the worst, most misleading and either fact-free or factually inaccurate article the Herald has ever printed.

Everybody concerned should be ashamed of themselves.

A truly laughably amateur piece of spin. We are not and never have been the mugs you think all football supporters are...although to be fair you've managed to find plenty of mugs to dupe.

Well, it was expected and foretold, the first salvo of "the club can't succeed without MY property profiteering, and what would happen to the club if it were starved of funds by myself and Community Si, as shareholders. Quite clearly the first long awaited public implied threat of "The wabbit gets it if you don't give me my property bunce"

Could be an excerpt from some 18th century dinosaur Tory manifesto. What a clown. Pity there was no one there to hand him his P45.
He hasn't invested one single penny of his own money to increase the income of HIS club, not one penny in 6 years. The only "extra" income has come from volunteer fans, all 150K of it. that should get us to the premiership. I don't know how much clearer he could be in confirming that old cliche ... the club doesn't want to get promoted.
I think an abridged version of that speech should go on a Plymouth Akkeron T shirt, accompanied by some appropriate comment.

Ever since he rocked up out of nowhere, complete with his white knights Webb and Newell, Brent has acted as if everybody in Plymouth is as stupid and ignorant (yes, they do mean different things, Brent, and yes, lots of us locals know the difference) as those two. It's a massive insult to the city and everybody who lives here, as if we haven't got internet access, can't look things up and analyse and interpret them for ourselves.

He should be drummed out of Plymouth altogether.

I feel Brent being the idiot he is really believes quoting Exeter Chiefs is the answer to all his troubles when faced with questions.

Earwegoagain wrote:

Czarcasm wrote:

If it was as simple as bolting in facking great conference facilities to guarantee mega income, every club would find the investment to do it. How much conferencing in our part of the world does he think actually happens? Bolting on facilities doesn’t generate EXTRA conferencing. What it does, is DILUTE the amount that Chiefs would be getting. Even if we matched their facilities regionally, would companies want to come to the English Rugby champs, or to a (soon to be) 4th division rank amateur circus?

All this corporate bullshit should anger the Argo faithfull who fill the terraces, I know it does me. There are more than 90% more terrace scum than there are Prawn sarnie munchers of whom I would say less than ten percent of manage to buy a cup of instant coffee from a cardboard cup with powdered milk for a cost of about £4. In the prawn sandwich dispensary you get filter coffee in a real cup For fifty pence with free feckin refills and they bring it to your table FFS! I gave up my season ticket seat four seasons ago with one big deciding factor being the leak right over my head that had been there for at least 3 years. When I went to a game last season and sat in block 15 I see they still haven't fixed the FOOKIN leak!
Brent has treated the lifeblood of the club with contempt, maybe all the directors should pick a well attended home game and try it from our point of view as a potd fan. First spend all evening trying to buy ticket online or get through the phone queues, then take four hours off work to buy your ticket whilst standing in a rain soaked pot holed car park being gurned at by volunteer Nool. Then on the day go and stand in rain again for half an hour trying to get in said ground, don't bother with refreshments there isn't time. Go and sit in your seat under the leak, sustainable model my hairy feckin arse.

well said earweg

Peggy wrote:

Ever since he rocked up out of nowhere, complete with his white knights Webb and Newell, Brent has acted as if everybody in Plymouth is as stupid and ignorant (yes, they do mean different things, Brent, and yes, lots of us locals know the difference) as those two. It's a massive insult to the city and everybody who lives here, as if we haven't got internet access, can't look things up and analyse and interpret them for ourselves.

He should be drummed out of Plymouth altogether.

At least the shyster confirmed what we all knew - we are in for years of austerity driven football shite.
Just feck off Brent and take yer shit plans with you.

Peggy wrote:

Ever since he rocked up out of nowhere, complete with his white knights Webb and Newell, Brent has acted as if everybody in Plymouth is as stupid and ignorant (yes, they do mean different things, Brent, and yes, lots of us locals know the difference) as those two. It's a massive insult to the city and everybody who lives here, as if we haven't got internet access, can't look things up and analyse and interpret them for ourselves.

He should be drummed out of Plymouth altogether.

Mr Akkeron through his emmissary on earth wrote:

“I appreciate the shape of the ball is wrong but the principle is absolutely right where they (chiefs ) generate, as I understand it, £16.5 million of income, the majority of which comes from Sandy Park, not from RFU distributions or match-day tick  

Well, I've just done some quick checking online that any doughnut can do, regarding Exeter Chiefs and their income. They get over  6.5 million in RFU and tv monies, plus 4 million gate receipts, averaging out their high ticket prices and attendance figures for league and cups last season. So, the "majority of income comes from Sandy Park" tosh trotted out by Brent is clearly, clearly misleading, right there. He has no shame. He'll say absolutely anything to make smoke. And that's before we, as his sort say, drill down further into where their income actually comes from, and IF Brent's revamped extra seating covers grandstand business plan is in any way comparable to Exeter, let alone the fact ANY extra income operating profit would be absolutely dwarfed by any championship tv payments should we ever get there again.

The Mrs won 2 tickets to a Chiefs match in a raffle last week.
She generously donated the prize to me and the junior General.
I was able to choose an Anglo Welsh cup match, or a European Cup match.
So on FA Cup 1st round weekend, we'll be jumping on the train on the Saturday to go and watch Exeter v Northampton in the Anglo Welsh cup.
Will be our first visit and will be interesting to see the difference in customer matchday experience

Innocent Egbunike wrote:

His reasoning might be sound if he had actually invested anything in the club infrastructure but he hasn’t....in fact, even when the opportunity to do so was handed to him on a Hallett-shaped plate he’s managed to feck it up by muddying it with his own plans for selfish gain.

Exactly this. Watching this interview with Brent and Hallet again you could almost be forgiven for believing the hype.

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Les Miserable wrote:

Haven't the chiefs spent millions on their team / infrastructure / stadium? Comparing the two is stretching it beyond a pisstake.....wake me up when this nightmare is over.

Haven't the Chiefs just won their Premier League playing an entertaining type of Rugby?

I thought this quote to be key

Green Jim wrote:

“The Championship is a very expensive place to be. It’s an expensive place potentially to get to.The current infrastructure of the club would not sustain it in the Championship over a period of time."

So its back to Division 4 for us as I'm not putting a penny in is how I read it