Let's put another lie to bed, location.

So we are struggling to attract the right players even though we have a competitive budget because of location?
I'm in, let's take turns one at a time please.
Sylvan Ebanks Blake.

Pretty much most of Olly's team!

Utter bollocks, this is a great part of the coutry to live, the current piss poor wage structure would be the biggest stumbling block. Granted, the excessive travelling every other week must wear a bit thin, but hey, the players don't need to drive or pay the fuel bills so can kick back and listen too some tunes or play with phones and computers, before you know it you're there, hardly going to wor is it.

BARRY HAYLES

Different time and there was a wage cap in place, but it obviously didn't bother Sammy Black too much.

Bababababababaab Bradley Wright Phillips!

players will play on the moon if the club they are signing for matches their ambitions and pays them accordingly.

Players want to win trophies and other achievements in their careers aswell as making money so when argyle for years pitch that they are local and tightwads is it anywonder they say no.

The location argument has always been a load of bollocks for Argyle in this division, borne out by the number of times the club has won promotion from it.There may be a case for the lack of big business in the area being an obstacle in attracting good players at their peak in the next division but that is more economic than geographical-players will go anywhere if the money is right. Scotland was the place to be for a while when Celtic and Rangers were more than competitive with other major European clubs, China is now pulling 'em in from everywhere, can't get much more diverse than those two countries. Excuse making nonsense.

Chuck Norris

Further back, and appreciate one was manager, but would names like Peter Shilton, Bruce Grobbelar have came down?

How many mentioned above were 'family' men when they came?????

Brian  Hall, Steve McCall, lovely little players. And my old mate, Alex Govan. I expect the excuse in Ipswich used to be no players wanted to move outside London until they got an owner and manager with ambition.
Too many owners down here wanting the kudos without playing the game and coughing up.

There's always players better than we have that would come here.

The difficult bit is finding them and once again that comes down to our inadequate infra-structure. There was a time when we probably all knew who our head scout was but right now I have no idea who it is or even if we have one at all.

And all it takes is one signing to get it going. Look back at the Buszaky transfer. Nobody had ever heard of him when he arrived but he came, word got around and Timar and Halmosi followed.

There must be plenty of players like them desperate to get into English football who simply don't care how far Plymouth is from Manchester or wherever.

Or we could solve the conundrum as to why our own young players get so far and no further with us.

The problem being either of those options involves actual real cash being invested and a long term plan instead of which we have 12 month contracts and no sort of plan beyond the short term at all.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

There's always players better than we have that would come here.

The difficult bit is finding them and once again that comes down to our inadequate infra-structure. There was a time when we probably all knew who our head scout was but right now I have no idea who it is or even if we have one at all.

And all it takes is one signing to get it going. Look back at the Buszaky transfer. Nobody had ever heard of him when he arrived but he came, word got around and Timar and Halmosi followed.

There must be plenty of players like them desperate to get into English football who simply don't care how far Plymouth is from Manchester or wherever.

Or we could solve the conundrum as to why our own young players get so far and no further with us.

The problem being either of those options involves actual real cash being invested and a long term plan instead of which we have 12 month contracts and no sort of plan beyond the short term at all.

too find those players we would have to have eyes and hears abroad who can wise del bhey up to certain players who can watch and stuff.

Our current scouting network consists of a scout who never goes south of birmingham, another who goes no futher north than ipswich and a kid who plays football manager.

The sort of scout Brent employs probably call him Akela and say dib dib dib dob dob dob a lot.

Brent is obviously using this excuse as a smokescreen for his behaviour and true motives. However this is one occasion on which he is telling the absolute truth, if only by default.

The yearning many of you have to be up there with the big clubs is perhaps understandable to an extent, but if you can't accept the fact that there is a very real handicap to being located in the South-West in the football industry you are simply opening yourselves up to perpetual dissatisfaction.

It's not as though those at the sharp end haven't tried to make fans of South-West clubs aware of the problem - former and current local managers Warnock, Rosenior, Sheridan, Claridge and Tisdale have all said in words of one syllable how much more difficult it is to get players to play in the South-West. Warnock spoke about it on Five Live only a couple of years back -  his exact words were "it's sooooo difficult to get players to come down here" (he was in the South-West at the time) with particular stress on the "so". More recently I believe Torquay were weighing up the idea of relocating their training facilities in Bristol in order to overcome the reluctance of players to go to Devon.

Giving a list of players who have gone there in the past means very little in this context. It's self-evident that SOME players will be prepared to play in Devon, otherwise we would all be watching local amateur football. The point is that many players (and especially the most sought after players - the bankers you can rely upon to produce from the beginning) will be deterred by our location and prefer to go elsewhere, all things being equal. Of course you can overcome that handicap by throwing money at the problem, but that would be reckless for clubs in our position (although I agree with the complaint that is not the main reason you are reduced to buying historically inconsistent players like Grant and goalkeepers from York and whatnot).

I don't recall too many of Holloway's players being established proven Championship performers before they went to you, or players whose signature was being fought over by bigger clubs or by similar clubs in more attractive locations and the other players mentioned so far are pre-Bosman.

It can't be stressed enough that life before Bosman took place in a different football universe. Players had far less say in where they wanted to play under the Tied Contract system (and then Retain and Transfer after the George Eastman case) which mitigated the handicap of our location. In fact the whole point of the levelling rules insisted on by the smaller clubs in provincial areas when the football league was founded, such as the aforementioned Tied Contracts - along with revenue sharing and the maximum wage - was precisely in order to stop players and resources inexorably flowing towards the bigger clubs in metropolitan areas in the way they currently do.

Unfortunately that level playing field was gradually demolished by the self-interest and power of the big clubs, the coup-de-grace being the Premier League of course. That is why it's futile looking back to the pre-Premier League/Heathrow Agreement era as a benchmark for where we should be today. Life is exponentially harder for clubs like ours since the big clubs hoarded all the cash and players gained the power to call the shots.

The problem isn't simply one of our physical location in practical terms - distance from family and support networks etc, although that is clearly an issue - but the fact that we are perceived to be a backwater of the football industry, out of sight and out of mind of the heartlands of the North-West, Midlands and London, not to mention the secondary centres of the North-East etc. By contrast the South-West is a heartland of the rugby industry and so professional rugby clubs are regarded with a respect football clubs lack. A top rugby player will see it as a credible place to be - a top footballer, not so much.

It's no different to any other industry - sought after employees who have options will tend to gravitate as close the centres of their industry as possible. There's a reason why you are a thousand times more likely to find top lawyers, financiers, models, graphic designers, musicians and journalists etc  in London rather than Exeter or Plymouth, or a top rugby league player in Leeds rather than London.

Moreover footballers know with almost 100% certainty that they will have to move on within a few years at most. When presented with a choice between a club in the South-West with only a couple of other potential future employers within a 100 mile radius (with the paltry alternative options largely being equally isolated) and a club with ten or 15 potential future employers a 45-minute drive away, or even reachable by London Transport, it should be obvious that is going to be  a powerful draw.

Incidentally this is why Brent's citing of the Chiefs is such rubbish (although to be fair some of our fans fall into the same trap). Once the old system of club rugby being an amateur participatory sport with no league structure, involving mainly friendlies played in front of a handful of spectators (Leicester Tigers average crowd in the seventies was a couple of hundred) evolved into a professional spectator sport, the power  of rugby in the region meant the Chiefs were always primed to explode, especially given the fact that the rugby pyramid is far easier to negotiate and that unlike our clubs they ended up with a chunk of prime, almost city-centre land to cash in on. There is no remotely similar favourable landscape, or headroom for South-West football clubs to grow into, so there are few lessons form the Chiefs that are particularly relevant to Devon football clubs.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

There's always players better than we have that would come here.

The difficult bit is finding them and once again that comes down to our inadequate infra-structure. There was a time when we probably all knew who our head scout was but right now I have no idea who it is or even if we have one at all.

And all it takes is one signing to get it going. Look back at the Buszaky transfer. Nobody had ever heard of him when he arrived but he came, word got around and Timar and Halmosi followed.

There must be plenty of players like them desperate to get into English football who simply don't care how far Plymouth is from Manchester or wherever.

Or we could solve the conundrum as to why our own young players get so far and no further with us.

The problem being either of those options involves actual real cash being invested and a long term plan instead of which we have 12 month contracts and no sort of plan beyond the short term at all.

Signing foreign players might be an option, but you would probably have to reach the Championship again for that to be viable. I don't think there are too many players who would relocate to a foreign country to play in Leagues 1 and 2 for the likely wages on offer that would justify the increased effort/cost of scouting abroad. I'm not sure there really are that many foreign players desperate to get into English football. If so why don't you historically see many of them at other clubs in in the lower leagues?

Of course if Brexit continues down it's present path most if not all of the players you've mentioned would find it much more difficult to get permission to play here. I suspect it's also possible that the FA would seek to reintroduce some sort of quota system if we aren't in the Single Market.

The point you make about investment in the youth system is valid. However as you say that requires short-term sacrifice, long-term planning and investment. It' took maybe 10 years for us to start seeing the full fruits of our youth policy and having the nerve to starve Tisdale of funds while unbudgeted income etc was diverted into that system, relying on him to outperform his meagre budget year after year until the system bore fruit.

Of course Brent prefers to devote those resources to property development, but on the other hand would fans be prepared to wait for that sort of strategy to pay off even if he didn't? We probably spent at least two extra years in the Conference after Tisdale's budget was cut in order to replace the Football league youth development funding. Even when we were back in the League the first-team budget was limited in order for funds to be devoted to the youth system etc. Judging by the yearning for quick success I see on your forums I'm not sure you would put up with that. After all, even some of our fans have regularly spat their dummy out and blamed Tisdale without being able to see the wood for the trees - the moronic exeweb is proof of that.

Very good appraisal indeed Jabba. I've always thought that the huge spectator catchment area argument is a largely false one too.

Always good to hear your thoughts Jabbs.

Its almost 10 years since Ian Holloway left us, that's pretty 10 years of being shit. I don't think anyone can be accused of yearning for quick success.

Hugh Watt wrote:

Its almost 10 years since Ian Holloway left us, that's pretty 10 years of being shit. I don't think anyone can be accused of yearning for quick success.

That Holloway era will go down in history as the last opportunity that Argyle had of ever reaching the top-flight. All it needed was a board who were willing to bring in some investment to help keep and boost the squad and push us over the line - that and a bit of good fortune. Instead they sold our best players to bolster the balance sheet and con Kagami into paying way over the odds for their personal shares. How staggeringly short-sighted was that? From that moment of greed onward the club was doomed. It is now a bottom 2 divisions yo-yo club at very best.

Greenskin wrote:

The location argument has always been a load of bollocks for Argyle in this division, borne out by the number of times the club has won promotion from it.

In the twenty-two years since  Bosman you've only won promotion from the third tier once and promotion of any sort three times. In the fifty-eight years since there were four divisions you have won promotion to the 2nd tier three times I believe.

Quote :

There may be a case for the lack of big business in the area being an obstacle in attracting good players at their peak in the next division but that is more economic than geographical-players will go anywhere if the money is right. Scotland was the place to be for a while when Celtic and Rangers were more than competitive with other major European clubs, China is now pulling 'em in from everywhere, can't get much more diverse than those two countries. Excuse making nonsense.

It's not so much the presence of big business that makes the region unattractive to footballers - rather the sparse presence of the football business there. Unfortunately Devon is simply too much of a backwater of the football industry for many footballers to be that enthused about playing there.

Are the examples of Rangers and China really that relevant? After all it was only Rangers who were attracting players to Scotland in the mid-nineties, not Scottish clubs as a whole. This was a time before the nuclear threat of the Premier League was really established and the gravitational pull of mega-money created the modern situation in which resources have been sucked towards big clubs and certain regions in certain countries.

They only attracted players in the first place by offering them big money - staggering sums in the historical context of Scottish football and the kind of money you are unlikely ever to remotely match in relative terms. In any case that reckless spending began their slide to financial ruin and liquidation and I'm sure none of you want to dice with that kind of death again.

Even with the money they were paying they weren't always acquiring the very best players for whom there was huge competition from big clubs elsewhere in Europe, with the possible exception of Laudrup. Gascoigne had been crocked during a failed spell with Lazio and was turned down by the likes of QPR and Everton (although he went there later of course). Rangers only competitor was pre-Abramovich Chelsea, who were a middling club far from the Chelsea we know today.

China are putting mega-money into football as part of a plan by no less an actor than the Chinese Communist Party to project soft power by making the country a world power in football. If you recall, their secret meetings with movers and shakers in Europe to form a breakaway World League were exposed in the press about a year ago. Indeed, the inevitability of some kind of breakaway is why I don't think there is any future in pinning all your hopes on dreams of the Premier League.

Of course you can attract players to Timbuktu if you pay them much more than anyone else, but in what credible scenario is that ever likely to happen in the South-West?

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

There's always players better than we have that would come here.

The difficult bit is finding them and once again that comes down to our inadequate infra-structure. There was a time when we probably all knew who our head scout was but right now I have no idea who it is or even if we have one at all.

And all it takes is one signing to get it going. Look back at the Buszaky transfer. Nobody had ever heard of him when he arrived but he came, word got around and Timar and Halmosi followed.

There must be plenty of players like them desperate to get into English football who simply don't care how far Plymouth is from Manchester or wherever.

Or we could solve the conundrum as to why our own young players get so far and no further with us.

The problem being either of those options involves actual real cash being invested and a long term plan instead of which we have 12 month contracts and no sort of plan beyond the short term at all.

Signing foreign players might be an option, but you would probably have to reach the Championship again for that to be viable. I don't think there are too many players who would relocate to a foreign country to play in Leagues 1 and 2 for the likely wages on offer that would justify the increased effort/cost of scouting abroad. I'm not sure there really are that many foreign players desperate to get into English football. If so why don't you historically see many of them at other clubs in in the lower leagues?

Of course if Brexit continues down it's present path most if not all of the players you've mentioned would find it much more difficult to get permission to play here. I suspect it's also possible that the FA would seek to reintroduce some sort of quota system if we aren't in the Single Market.

The point you make about investment in the youth system is valid. However as you say that requires short-term sacrifice, long-term planning and investment. It' took maybe 10 years for us to start seeing the full fruits of our youth policy and having the nerve to starve Tisdale of funds while unbudgeted income etc was diverted into that system, relying on him to outperform his meagre budget year after year until the system bore fruit.

Of course Brent prefers to devote those resources to property development, but on the other hand would fans be prepared to wait for that sort of strategy to pay off even if he didn't? We probably spent at least two extra years in the Conference after Tisdale's budget was cut in order to replace the Football league youth development funding. Even when we were back in the League the first-team budget was limited in order for funds to be devoted to the youth system etc. Judging by the yearning for quick success I see on your forums I'm not sure you would put up with that. After all, even some of our fans have regularly spat their dummy out and blamed Tisdale without being able to see the wood for the trees - the moronic exeweb is proof of that.

Just to pick on the youth thing for a moment.

What I am about to post will probably prove to be rather unpopular because a) it will involve the praise of James Brent and Dan McCauley and b) criticism of Ian Holloway but here goes anyway...

We did have the framework for a viable youth system. It operated very nicely for several years. It must have been instigated around 1995 because McCauley and Warnock established it and were wise enough to foresee the likely competition for resources within the club and set it up to be semi-autonomous.

As you so accurately describe fans, chairmen and managers alike will always want to see the 1st XI get the bulk of the finance and everything else can go hang. Warnock and McCauley were aware of this and set up the first Plymouth Argyle Trust (PAST & DT) in order to combat problems further down the line.

It operated well enough and long enough for a hotel/hostel it purchased to give a home to young players new to Plymouth to accrue significant value and became very asset rich. For some reason Holloway took against it and all but wound PAST & DT up by withdrawing patronage. A moribund PAST & DT sold the hotel/hostel and sat on a small fortune (which I believe it still does) which Stapleton shamelessly snaffled during the build-up to admin and which has since been paid back by the club under Brent's ownership.

God knows why Holloway took against it but there you are. We had the framework and basis for a youth system in place and Holloway trashed it.

It was a seminal moment when it comes down to it. PAST & DT was universally popular with the fans who largely funded it via donations (I even rattled a collecting tin myself for it) and even the wider general public who would happily cough up as often as not when you explained it was for Argyle's kids. It really was a proper community thing operated by the community and for the community which could see the value of what it did for both the kids concerned and the club but also for the city itself.

There was a hoo-ha at the time and many educated wankers were not exactly happy with Holloway's decision but he was bomb-proof at the time due to Argyle's on-pitch success and could do as he pleased. The Charity Commission wasn't happy either once Stapleton had fleeced the pot but it all resolved itself in the end, Brent assumed the debt post-admin and paid it off, and there's others here far better placed to give chapter and verse about that should they decide to.

I suppose given all that has happened since it is all small potatoes but you don't know what you've got until it's gone and all that. And it is gone. And it is unlikely to come back.

Les Miserable wrote:

Utter bollocks, this is a great part of the coutry to live...

In many respects it is, but even if the physical charms of their environment are a principle consideration for a footballer, which I doubt is true for many players, those at their peak, or with potential to eventually be valuable players to a team, tend to be fit young men with a degree of fame  and adulation, consequent high social status, a fair bit of money relative to their peers, more than a few willing and attractive young women following them around and all the opportunities being a young footballer brings.

Such individuals tend not to be all that entranced by a life in the rural idyll, not to mention the fact that most of the population - and thus most footballers - come from metropolitan areas in the first place. I know of at least one young player who couldn't hack the almighty culture shock he felt living in the South-West and yet more for whom a desire to return to bigger cities in more densely populated, better-connected areas was a factor in their decision to leave.

Quote :

...the current piss poor wage structure would be the biggest stumbling block.

Brent's tendency to nurse his wallet unless he's spending to accumulate more money for himself is obviously relevant to to your immediate situation. All I'm saying is that the general point of our location being a handicap is absolutely true, notwithstanding the fact that Brent is cynically hiding behind it in this specific case.

Can't argue with a lot of that Jabbs although it is lacking context. The context of my OP was that we are expected to believe that Argyle can only hope to attract the calibre of players capable of yoyoing between league 1 and 2 and our current league position is because of the locational issues as well. I can accept your poiint about established CCC players not wanting to come here but we are talking about good players for this level, if you asked anyone who the best players were at Argyle over the last twenty years I reckon well over half of them would have been signed in league 1 and 2. The reason they came was because there was a buzz about the place at the time, they knew it was a team in an upwardly trajectory they no doubt knew from talking to players they knew that it was a good club to sign for at that time. The only buzz around Argyle at the moment is the flies feasting on the putrefying pigeon carcasses under the seats.

I thoroughly disagree with your synopsis Jabba. You are as much a defeatist as the squire, and forget many of the underlying things that motivate footballers.
There have been plenty of in demand talented "young men" coming down to parrochial Exeter to ply their trade at Sandy Park. I assume these young rugby stars have the same urges, desires and ambition as footballers do, they're not from Mars.
Ambition is where it's at. You're a young man, an itinerant worker, used to following the harvest where it may be, make hay while the sunshines and all that.
Players have a 10 to 15 year period in which to make their mark, and future life if they are lucky. The best way to accomplish that is to tag on to a team, and club, that everyone knows is going places, for instance at the moment, that would be either of the Bristol clubs. Players will always improve their game and impress prospective suitors by being helped by other good players around them, and there is nothing like success to boost your value. Ambition is a honeypot irresistible to players, the football village knows what clubs are making waves and at what levels. That all overrides the location thing for a couple of years, no problem. And in today's smaller planet, easier quicker travel, even more so. Holloway was a classic example down here.
And when you're older, a star, and you've made a bit of dosh like, say Barry Hayles, you quite like the idea of enjoying your later years with a manager you respect and know you will have fun with. It's all about dreams and accomplishing them, not whether you're billeted next to the M1.
We're not talking about whether Russian clubs are on the up, whether China is the next big thing, we're talking the possibility of doing well in the championship in this country. For the likes of Brent to start pushing around the idea that a club like Argyle can't do in the championship what they did just 10 or so years ago, is frankly a disgrace, and nothing but smoke to cover his own agenda.