James Brent on Spotlight Tonight

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Blimey! Looks like my fag packet sums have given a vaguely credible outcome. I was expecting a load of "that's a load of crap that is".

Nah, they were awful, I'm guessing bean counting or budget analysis aren't your game and Cerby if you really think the playing budget at ECFC is 35% of turn over then you you need a reality check or more reliable sauces.

I would guess you would be looking to budget for income of around 3 and a half to 4 million next season, it takes time to rebuild, that should put you in the top 10 in your league, assuming you stay up, but that is about it, some of these clubs seem to drag revenue out of thin air. Obviously the paying off of the outstanding football creditor debt will be a drag but just look at what the Turks have done on two bob and a bag of marbles.

You just need to lose that Billy Big Bollocks attitude and you will be fine in half a decade or so.

think youll find sensible no part of my post says that purse & chadwick were given 6 figures to sign on.
read my posts again.

like i say sensi its like this:

player x has a choice - join club A 60miles away who will pay say 70k sign on fee & 85k per year wages lets say 2 year deal.
or club B - 250miles away who will pay EXACTLY the same as the above.

who are YOU gonna join................

club B you will have to MOVE to join, club a you wont..............

now if player B wants to join club B i would say (THATS MY OPINION BY THE WAY), er hang on i want a bigger singing on fee...........of course this doesn't happen, of course not..........peter swann ?

So in short you have no real idea then and these are figures you made up as it is your opinion. Most of the stuff you read on football chat sites are made up because that is all they can be. I could equaly say that player A has 2 choices, join a club down the road or Plymouth. Plymouth is offering a 2 year contract and the other a one year contract. The pay is a little more at Plymouth than it is at the other and the signing on fee as I'm a freebie is £10k. More long term stability at Plymouth therefore I'll sign that one. See, it's easy to make up scenarios and mine could be just as easily correct as your's. I do like my facts though if stated as one as none of us know the details of contracts do we. I made mine up. Where did your's come from.

opinion ? thought thats what a fans forum is designed for.

dont think at any point i claimed to have inside football knowledge..............

i would imagine (opinion again )very few players will ask for a 10k signing on fee in the football league (maybe youre a football agent on the other hand & know different)
if the pay is more and its a two year versus a one year then youd take the two year ???? but my senario had the agony of choice

What you actually said to 125+1 in your original post was that a player would want a 6 figure sum. That is where I got that bit from because you wrote it. You also said the only players we could get would be 20 year olds who need us more than we need them. I'm quoting here.

Now, the gist of your post was to rubbish something that 125+1 posted which was his opinion because like you and me he cannot know the figures he used for sure. What I'm doing is showing you that you are only using opinion just like him and you cannot possibly know that your opinion is the right one. What gets my goat is the way Argyle supporters always seem to play down their own club in terms of football importance. I don't have a billy big bollocks view of Argyle as Lord Tisdale put it but I do believe that Argyle's worth in football terms is as good as anyone else. He also points out that Torquay aren't doing badly on a little money. Did they pay huge signing on fees for rubbish? Well, not in league terms they didn't as one they don't have the wedge to bribe people to go there or the gate receipts to pay mega wages either. They are about 30 miles up the road from us though so I guess moving 270 miles instead of 300 miles is the attraction.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Blimey! Looks like my fag packet sums have given a vaguely credible outcome. I was expecting a load of "that's a load of crap that is".

Nah, they were awful, I'm guessing bean counting or budget analysis aren't your game and Cerby if you really think the playing budget at ECFC is 35% of turn over then you you need a reality check or more reliable sauces.

I would guess you would be looking to budget for income of around 3 and a half to 4 million next season, it takes time to rebuild, that should put you in the top 10 in your league, assuming you stay up, but that is about it, some of these clubs seem to drag revenue out of thin air. Obviously the paying off of the outstanding football creditor debt will be a drag but just look at what the Turks have done on two bob and a bag of marbles.

You just need to lose that Billy Big Bollocks attitude and you will be fine in half a decade or so.

If I was to be critical of my fag packet sums it would be because the average entry price is probably far lower than the £20 I mentioned. Conversely there's lots of different revenue streams that I haven't counted at all which might balance out the over estimate.

If I run with your £4m turnover, which does not seem unreasonable, then the same calculations run as follows.

Pay of the 600k in wages owed and the loss for this year and we are left with about £2700000. 55% of that is £1485000. Split between 20 players that gives a weekly wage of £1427 which isn't so very different to the figure I came up with earlier.

The question is does that 55% apply just to players or all of the staff? That might be far more significant. Do we know the answer to this?

How can we stretch this budget? Loanees paid for by the loaning club would be the easiest way. Playing our own youngsters would be another. I doubt that Luke Young is currently on anything like that much.

I don't see why we wouldn't attract good players for next season. The pool of candidates in this division is far bigger than it is in a higher division and players are far more desperate to get a deal. It doesn't seem as though Chaddy needed much convincing to come back. On top of that where we might be a last resort destination for a CCC player but we are very much a desirable club with the potential to deliver both a decent wage and a good shot at glory for a player looking at a likely League 2 contract.

We can both incentivise and contractualise the 55% salary thing into wage deals by paying a bonus linked to attendances just like we used to back in Dave Smith's day. Proper performance related bonuses can only be a good thing when compared to generous long term deals.

I hope you meant us as a club and not me when you referred to the "Billy Big Bollocks" attitude. I couldn't agree more. Hard graft will see us progress much more readily than raw talent. Gettting the blend of the two just right is the perfect but elusive solution here

Guys, I have a hang over, this isn't helping it.

Iggy wrote:

Guys, I have a hang over, this isn't helping it.

Exactly what I thought earlier.............. STFU !

my point to 125+1 is just cos southend have done it doesnt mean we can.
two situations different as things stand, we are emasticated by debt for next 5 years & have a very inexperienced management duo.
southend whilst having little cash still managed to draw neil harris from millwall. we would certainly struggle to get that kind of player here (not impossible either though).
i stand by the player would want a 6 figure sum, now wether they GET that sum is another matter entirely.

enjoy the game.now my man flu is gone im hoping to see us win today at home park for first time since 2007

Waffle...waffle...waffle...waffle...waffle...waffle.....in my opinion Christmas is only 10 months away.

happy christmas

Thank you.

GregCampbellFanClub wrote:

think youll find sensible no part of my post says that purse & chadwick were given 6 figures to sign on.
read my posts again.

like i say sensi its like this:

player x has a choice - join club A 60miles away who will pay say 70k sign on fee & 85k per year wages lets say 2 year deal.
or club B - 250miles away who will pay EXACTLY the same as the above.

who are YOU gonna join................

club B you will have to MOVE to join, club a you wont..............

now if player B wants to join club B i would say (THATS MY OPINION BY THE WAY), er hang on i want a bigger singing on fee...........of course this doesn't happen, of course not..........peter swann ?

You mention Peter Swann, But tell me not to mention Sturrock

As for you player a and b rubbish, it all depends on ambitions of the clubs and players themselves.

If you were from london and offered the same money to play for Luton or Ipswich who would you choose?

As for signing on fee's, most fee's are worked out at 10% of thier annual salary, so 200k a year probably around 20K signing on fee. But not always the case.

As for a player of the calibre of Neil Harris!, you mean Neil Harris, 34 years old at the end of his career. Darren Purse springs to mind!

You didnt really think that through much!

Look at the top 10 of league 2 and tell me how many of those teams paid fee's for the players, other than Swindon,Crawley and Rotherham.

There will be hundreds of Championship,L1 and L2 players out of contract end of season, looking for clubs, so get with it!.

There's no apostrophe in fees ffs !

This is so boring, so parochial and so Aviva !

It boils down to this- due to the rolled over debts and the public desire of the club's owner for "sustainability" PAFC will have the spending power of a club like, for instance Port Vale, but won't be located within commuting distance of 20 or so other clubs that we could sign or borrow players from.

So the players that Argyle will be able to sign will most likely be those that can't get fixed up with a club near where they live.

I'm not saying we'll be scrapping the bottom of the barrel, but we'll be pretty close.

There's a bit in Garry Nelson's book about his time at Torquay where he talks about them struggling to get players in on trial 'cos TUFC couldn't afford to pay them petrol money. That's the sort of Club Argyle are now.


Good job the Trust and the CPers pushed for a Brent takeover. If they knew it would lead to this sort of situation, why the hell didn't they try to find another (any other) buyer- or didn't they know what Brent's plans were? Which would beg the question, why not?

If all you an offer to a discussion is an insulting tag of a name Tring then why bother at all. In fact a lot of your posts simply include the word "Aviva" in it and say very little at all.

GregCampbellfanclub, you base your argument on nothing more than opinion and very little that is fact. We are indeed burdened with debt which if we didn't have would put us in a better position to pay players and therefore attract them here. However, there seems to be some opinion that we need to increase our gate numbers to 7500 from 6000 to cover these debts. Lets go the other way then and take the 1500 off the gates we do get generally. Means we have gates of 4500 as a basis to offer wages. How many clubs in this league operate with less than that and still manage? None or quite a few? Monetarily we are still on a par with most of the clubs and better off than some. This players won't come here thing is a nonsense. Plenty of clubs have players that turn them down. Difference is we know about the Argyle ones but that is because that's where our interest is and we take note. We do not know about other clubs because we take little interest in their day to day running and only note those that sign. We are no different from any other club in this league. We either offer a package to a player that they accept or we don't. There are plenty of players looking for employment and like any other market it belongs to the employer now unless you are a big club in a top or upper league who can pick and choose.

Incidentaly the game today was crap and we should have won it at a canter.

Sensiblegreeny wrote:

This players won't come here thing is a nonsense. Plenty of clubs have players that turn them down. Difference is we know about the Argyle ones but that is because that's where our interest is and we take note. We do not know about other clubs because we take little interest in their day to day running and only note those that sign. We are no different from any other club in this league. We either offer a package to a player that they accept or we don't. There are plenty of players looking for employment and like any other market it belongs to the employer now unless you are a big club in a top or upper league who can pick and choose.

Incidentaly the game today was crap and we should have won it at a canter.

Players won't come here 'thing' is not a nonsense. Ask every Argyle manager since at least the late sixties. Everyone of them has made mention of it. And, if you can get them to come, you have had to pay over the odds to swing the deal in your favour.

Honestly... Most football players are young lads not only the prime of their physical lives, but their social ones as well. Who in their right mind would want to move to Plymouth? They aren't ready to retire.

It is a liablility we live with.

Sorry but that is a myth. Plymouth has a professional football club (no jokes please) and is no different to any other City with one. Why do Plymouth people always sell this City short in the belief that it is some kind of backwater and retirement home? There are many people who have come to this City to live who are way short of retirement age and stay. Why just Plymouth if that is the excuse, why not Torquay, Exeter, Bournmouth, Southampton, Portsmouth and Brighton who are all on the South Coast and offer little more than Plymouth does. OK, maybe take Brighton out of that even though I have never been there. All are considered part of the retirement area or to have excessive numbers of OAPs. Ever heard that excuse trotted out by them?

As I said we have no idea how many players turn down moves to other clubs because we only take note of this one. Dickenson is a good example. Signed for us then left to go to Southend. Why? Because he didn't like the nightlife here or perhaps because at the time there was doubt about players actually being paid. It is the second option of those two and nothing whatsoever to do with the first.

Sensiblegreeny wrote:

This players won't come here thing is a nonsense. Plenty of clubs have players that turn them down. Difference is we know about the Argyle ones but that is because that's where our interest is and we take note. We do not know about other clubs because we take little interest in their day to day running and only note those that sign. We are no different from any other club in this league. We either offer a package to a player that they accept or we don't. There are plenty of players looking for employment and like any other market it belongs to the employer now unless you are a big club in a top or upper league who can pick and choose.

Players not coming here isn't a nonsense. Rather than a long post you'll ignore I'll just put a few pointers.

Neil Warnock made a huge deal of bigging up the area to attract players.

So did Holloway

Not sure who, maybe Ollie?, made a big point of signing 'settled' players, nice area for schooling and family life etc

Pulis was totally honest in his assessments, backwater etc Nobody likes travelling to Plymouth, imagine having to travel from Plymouth every other week?

This is from just 3 successful managers we were fortunate to have whom all went on to better things.

Sensiblegreeny wrote:

Sorry but that is a myth.

What's a myth?

Talk all you like about other coastal retirement towns...

It still doesn't alter the fact one iota, that every manager since Waiters has stated its hard(er) to get players to come to Plymouth if they are being offered the same terms elswhere.

It is a fact the Managers have said this, whether you like it or not. You might disagree with them, but I suggest they know more than you about the situation.

Be sensible.

Coxside_Green wrote:

Sensiblegreeny wrote:

This players won't come here thing is a nonsense. Plenty of clubs have players that turn them down. Difference is we know about the Argyle ones but that is because that's where our interest is and we take note. We do not know about other clubs because we take little interest in their day to day running and only note those that sign. We are no different from any other club in this league. We either offer a package to a player that they accept or we don't. There are plenty of players looking for employment and like any other market it belongs to the employer now unless you are a big club in a top or upper league who can pick and choose.

Players not coming here isn't a nonsense. Rather than a long post you'll ignore I'll just put a few pointers.

Neil Warnock made a huge deal of bigging up the area to attract players.

So did Holloway

Not sure who, maybe Ollie?, made a big point of signing 'settled' players, nice area for schooling and family life etc

Pulis was totally honest in his assessments, backwater etc Nobody likes travelling to Plymouth, imagine having to travel from Plymouth every other week?

This is from just 3 successful managers we were fortunate to have whom all went on to better things.

It doesn't matter how many times you point out something to an Aviva, they won't understand................ Trust in Stapes

Tringy, I think the "Aviva" moniker is well understood and gives most of us on here a chuckle with the picture it conjures up. However it can be used in a rather vicious manner which I find a tad distasteful. I see SG as a valuable member of this site and would describe him as a supporter who tries to see the best in what he fully accepts is a bad lot. His optimistic outlook is a welcome counterbalance and one of the delights of this site over pBay is the absence of abuse over contrary viewpoints.

Charlie Wood wrote:

Tringy, I think the "Aviva" moniker is well understood and gives most of us on here a chuckle with the picture it conjures up. However it can be used in a rather vicious manner which I find a tad distasteful. I see SG as a valuable member of this site and would describe him as a supporter who tries to see the best in what he fully accepts is a bad lot. His optimistic outlook is a welcome counterbalance and one of the delights of this site over pBay is the absence of abuse over contrary viewpoints.

To be fair SG gives as good as he takes, certainly nothing wrong with that and should be welcomed. It's just unfortunate some of his views do seem rather clouded to the point where the club or current owner can do no wrong.

So the message from Tringy all the way from Cyprus is agree with me or I will use a childish made up name to make you look silly. You have the nerve to complain about PASOTI and it's shouting down of anyone who doesn't follow the party line and do exactly the same youself on ATD. Perhaps you should transfer your posts to that site instead where you would clearly be at home.

I have not said anywhere that I am a believer in all things Argyle or Brent. Just because I have the opinion that players go where they can get a contract does not make it blinkered. I still believe that and that Argyle cannot sign players is a myth. Somehow people are asked to believe that Argyle are different to all other clubs. We have to pay more or offer bigger inducements. No we don't and have signed plenty of players in our time from this impossible position. Players will come here if the move is right for them and are getting paid. And that has nothing to do with loving Brent either.

Think its fair to say we'll all have to agree to differ, one thing i would say to Sensi is when you have spent a number of years away from Plymouth, settle in another area come back to Plymouth & you'll maybe understand why some people think/regard Plymouth as a backwater.

For the record i think plymouth doesnt make enough of itself.................