Simon Hallett says irons in fire over new investor/ what he seeks in a new boss

Hallett speaks to hearld

from the link wrote:

The Pilgrims' chairman has made it clear since the beginning of this season he would like to bring in someone to provide extra financial support for the Home Park club

Progress on finding a new investor for Plymouth Argyle has been slower than chairman Simon Hallett had hoped but he has confirmed there are at least two possible options.

Hallett increased his ownership of the club to 87 per cent last summer after agreeing to buy 3.3 million shares from some outgoing investors of Argyle Green LLC. He later made it clear that for the Pilgrims to try to achieve their mission of becoming a top six Championship club with Premier League aspirations by 2028 extra financial support was going to be needed.

The United States-based businessman would like to carry on as Argyle's majority shareholder and chairman as long as he can but would welcome a new investor to fund not only the first team budget but infrastructure projects too.

Hallett told Plymouth Live: "We have got a few irons in the fire, progress has been more slow than we had hoped so nothing has been done yet. We had hopes something would be done several months before this, but we have got a few things that I obviously can't disclose directly.

"We have got at least two I know about that are possibles, one of which is quite a strong possibility, and there is a couple more I'm going to get briefed about today (Tuesday)."

Hallett continued: "I would like to get something done by Christmas - last Christmas! We were obviously restricted in what we could do in the transfer window in January, and we will be restricted in the transfer window this summer unless we can get somebody in.

"So if we are to achieve the goal of getting a new investor who is going to help fund not just the infrastructure but a bit more money into the squad then that's going to have to be by the transfer window.

"If we can't we are going to be competing at the bottom half of the Championship like we have been this season."

yet they are still persisting with the brickfields project rather than use that money where its needed now. I cant see many running to invest in a club where they are reluctant to go with the times or invest in projects that will see a return on their money.


another hearld article

from the link wrote:

The Pilgrims' chairman has talked to Plymouth Live about the decision to sack Ian Foster, why it was taken when it was, and where the club stand when it comes to appointing a successor.

Ian Foster was the third manager/head coach to be appointed under Simon Hallett's ownership of Plymouth Argyle when he arrived at Home Park in early January.

His two predecessors, Ryan Lowe and Steven Schumacher, had both led the Pilgrims to promotions before leaving for Preston North End and Stoke City respectively. However, Foster's tenure lasted just 87 days and 14 Championship matches, with the team losing eight out of 11 before he was sacked after the 1-0 Easter Monday defeat by Bristol City at Home Park.

Some fans had angrily turned on Foster, who was in his first senior club role, during and after the 1-0 defeat by Lowe's Preston on March 16 but Argyle chairman Hallett and his board of directors stuck with him going into a two-week international break.

However, after back-to-back defeats at Norwich City and Bristol City over Easter, and with the threat of relegation to League One becoming a very real threat, the decision was taken to part ways with the former England under-20s head coach.

United States-based Hallett is recovering from a knee operation but was given the medical all clear to return to the UK last week and he attended the 1-0 win away to Rotherham United on Friday before returning to Plymouth with the squad.

In an interview with Plymouth Live's Argyle reporter Chris Errington, Hallett talked openly about the decision to sack Foster, why it was taken when it was, and where the club stand when it comes to appointing a successor.

Simon, you and this club have got so many decisions right over the last few years, how did it go so wrong with the appointment of Ian Foster?

It clearly went wrong, I'm not sure it went as wrong as people generally think. We know that all processes that lead to decision making under conditions of uncertainty, it's certain that sometimes you will get things wrong.

We used the same process we used to get Schuey and Ryan and this time it didn't work out. Why didn't it work out? Results were bad and we need to stay up, it's as simple as that.

With hindsight Ian was in a very difficult position. I think the position was probably worse than we thought it was, that our first half of our season we out-resulted our performances, and the second half of the season we resulted in line with our performances.

So Ian was in a difficult position and I think the stress told on him and he didn't manage to develop the relationships that would have better enabled him to see him through it.

The great things about outcomes you get wrong is you learn from them and we have got meetings today (Tuesday) and this week to think about how to improve the process. If it works every time you never improve it. Maybe you never need to!

I feel desperately sorry for Ian it didn't work out but we just didn't have the time to let him sort it out. People seem to have forgotten after his first month here he was short-listed for manager-of-the-month so it went wrong very quickly after that and it was a great shame but we obviously had to do something in the end.

When did you realise you might need to make a change of manager/head coach?

About a week before we did, we kind of talked about it a bit during the international break. People said we should have done it during the international break.

This Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday routine of games makes making changes very difficult because you break the training routine and that can cause even more problems.

The atmosphere at Home Park during and after the Preston game was toxic, I think that's the right word. It's the most toxic I can recall for many, many years. Did you consider making a change immediately after that game?

No, we are not going to make a change just because the fans are yelling. We have made loads of decisions that have been unpopular with the fans, and we have ignored a lot of demands from the fans.

Look, I'm an investment guy. You become a good investment guy by being a contrarian. It makes you dig your feet in a bit more, particularly when that tiny minority of fans were being so abusive. I'm sorry but it makes us less likely to make a change they are demanding.

Did you consult with the players at all about making a change? Did the players come to you about making a change?

We have structures here so that some of the players were giving opinions to some of our management people. We had Neil Dewsnip as director of football and Andrew (Parkinson, CEO) was the line manager for Ian so we were getting some feedback.

So there is lines of communication between the dressing room and the boardroom?

There are. Now whether they are as good as they could be, it's a very difficult thing. Footballers tend to get antsy when they are not getting their own way. One thing we were very good at, and Schuey was very good at, was keeping the squad happy - not all the time - but most of the time when some even senior players weren't starting games.

Clearly, to win the League One title we obviously had to operate as a squad and that concept of the team that starts and the team that finishes was very powerful and I think it weakened a bit this season, so there was a bit more disruption going on.

Presumably you are going to have to pay-out a fair amount of money to Ian Foster, who was under contract until 2027, does that impact the transfer budget this summer?

Of course. Anything when money goes out unexpectedly it impacts the future. Yes, absolutely.

How much of an impact will that have?

We will see. As everybody knows we are looking for a new investor, so when we think about it now we have to have four budgets - we have to have a Championship budget with a new investor, a Championship budget without a new investor, a League One budget with a new investor and a League One budget without a new investor.

We can't say at the moment. The goal will be, as we have said since the beginning of this season, to find a new investor who is going to help us push further up the Championship than we are at the moment.

You appointed Neil Dewsnip and Kevin Nancekivell in temporary charge. Neil Warnock made it clear he would have done the job. What was the thinking behind going with Neil and Kevin?

Just continuity. Kevin has managed before - he managed that famous Scunthorpe game when we won but thanks to Sunderland at Southend it didn't keep us up.

Neil and Nance know the team very well. Nance is very well-liked by the squad. These next five games will be about morale, passion, intensity and I think Nance is the man to do that, though neither of them it should be clear want to be the next manager.

There has been some absolute c**p written on social media, which I have tried to avoid for the last month because it has been so nonsensical, about Neil (Dewsnip).

Neil has been fantastic at this club for four-and-a-half years, and the notion that he's this evil genius trying selfishly to position himself is just insulting. If people are going to go around saying that we are risking losing him and I would hate to lose him, he has been fantastic for us.

The manager pool will be similar to what you were looking at three months ago, with one or two differences. Are you going to look at somebody who was in that pool before, or will you look for a different type of manager this time?

We are going to talk about it this week, what are the learnings from this one going wrong. The basic criteria we are looking for are going to be similar. There will be a few additions I think we have to look for so that could mean the filtering process will lead to some different outcomes.

At the moment, I think it's too early to say exactly whether we are going to be looking for anything particularly different, but we want to play attacking football, and I think that was one of Ian's problems.

Ian figured out pretty early on how to tighten up the defence and that worked, but he needed to figure out how to tighten up the defence without strangling the attack, and clearly he never quite figured that out.

So a manager who is good at both ends of the pitch - and in the middle! - would be great, somebody who is innovative, who understands the culture here and likes the culture here.

I think what we have had here most of the time over the last five years is a really cohesive club, and a manager who understands he's a cog in that machine as opposed to somebody who is running everything is important.

We have lacked cohesion for the last three or four months. I'm not saying it's Ian's fault. I think there is fault on both sides, but we lacked that cohesiveness between the playing squad, the back office staff, the ownership, the fans. The sum of our parts was much greater than any of the individual parts, I think, so we have got to get back to that and have a manager who understands that.

Presumably you would want to appoint a new manager as soon as possible into the close season?

Absolutely. The applications are coming in. We will start the process once they start drying up.

Will the new person be called the head coach or the manager? Does it matter to you?

It does matter. Was Schuey a head coach or a manager? He was very much a coach but he was a little bit of a manager as well. We will want somebody who has got coaching chops, which Ian had.

It's not going to be an Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger type of manager who is in charge of everything. We have got people at the club who are really good and they will be giving advice to the head coach/manager.

We have the director of football/head coach structure here, but we are just such a whole here. It's just a bunch of people doing their jobs that are roughly defined and people getting on with it, rather than 'I'm the head coach, I'm not allowed to do this'.

I have just read a book, which basically revolves around data use at Liverpool, and it's quite clear that Jurgen Klopp is a bit of a coach and a bit of a manager.

If the data people say 'We are going to hire X' he can say no, but he usually agrees with them because they tend to be right, and that's the kind of manager we want, who is prepared to give input but prepared to listen throughout the club; somebody who accepts he has got a role as part of a well-functioning organisation is really important.

very arrogant interview imo and one that tells me that no mater who comes in if they arent schumacher mark 2 they will struggle to put their stamp on this team in terms of how we play who we buy etc without resistance from others at the club insisting they do things their way. In short in see another youth coach getting the job and it will be de ja vu.

I think the sacking of Foster will make it a lot harder for Argyle to get a new Coach/Manager.

As well as the lack of clarity over whether it's a coach or a manager we are after, all the rumours about why Foster was sacked-aloof, tried to change players bad habits, over coaching, etc. could well be interpreted from a distance as Argyle's squad being hard to manage and resistant to change.

When Kemp came in he gave the "my way or the highway" speech on his first day. Foster didn't do anything like that but seemingly had players going behind his back telling tales to the likes of Dewsnip and Parkinson.

I think there's more than a few managers who will say that sort of thing isn't for them.

Angry wrote:

Hallett speaks to hearld

from the link wrote:

The Pilgrims' chairman has made it clear since the beginning of this season he would like to bring in someone to provide extra financial support for the Home Park club

Progress on finding a new investor for Plymouth Argyle has been slower than chairman Simon Hallett had hoped but he has confirmed there are at least two possible options.

Hallett increased his ownership of the club to 87 per cent last summer after agreeing to buy 3.3 million shares from some outgoing investors of Argyle Green LLC. He later made it clear that for the Pilgrims to try to achieve their mission of becoming a top six Championship club with Premier League aspirations by 2028 extra financial support was going to be needed.

The United States-based businessman would like to carry on as Argyle's majority shareholder and chairman as long as he can but would welcome a new investor to fund not only the first team budget but infrastructure projects too.

Hallett told Plymouth Live: "We have got a few irons in the fire, progress has been more slow than we had hoped so nothing has been done yet. We had hopes something would be done several months before this, but we have got a few things that I obviously can't disclose directly.

"We have got at least two I know about that are possibles, one of which is quite a strong possibility, and there is a couple more I'm going to get briefed about today (Tuesday)."

Hallett continued: "I would like to get something done by Christmas - last Christmas! We were obviously restricted in what we could do in the transfer window in January, and we will be restricted in the transfer window this summer unless we can get somebody in.

"So if we are to achieve the goal of getting a new investor who is going to help fund not just the infrastructure but a bit more money into the squad then that's going to have to be by the transfer window.

"If we can't we are going to be competing at the bottom half of the Championship like we have been this season."

yet they are still persisting with the brickfields project rather than use that money where its needed now. I cant see many running to invest in a club where they are reluctant to go with the times or invest in projects that will see a return on their money.


another hearld article

from the link wrote:

The Pilgrims' chairman has talked to Plymouth Live about the decision to sack Ian Foster, why it was taken when it was, and where the club stand when it comes to appointing a successor.

Ian Foster was the third manager/head coach to be appointed under Simon Hallett's ownership of Plymouth Argyle when he arrived at Home Park in early January.

His two predecessors, Ryan Lowe and Steven Schumacher, had both led the Pilgrims to promotions before leaving for Preston North End and Stoke City respectively. However, Foster's tenure lasted just 87 days and 14 Championship matches, with the team losing eight out of 11 before he was sacked after the 1-0 Easter Monday defeat by Bristol City at Home Park.

Some fans had angrily turned on Foster, who was in his first senior club role, during and after the 1-0 defeat by Lowe's Preston on March 16 but Argyle chairman Hallett and his board of directors stuck with him going into a two-week international break.

However, after back-to-back defeats at Norwich City and Bristol City over Easter, and with the threat of relegation to League One becoming a very real threat, the decision was taken to part ways with the former England under-20s head coach.

United States-based Hallett is recovering from a knee operation but was given the medical all clear to return to the UK last week and he attended the 1-0 win away to Rotherham United on Friday before returning to Plymouth with the squad.

In an interview with Plymouth Live's Argyle reporter Chris Errington, Hallett talked openly about the decision to sack Foster, why it was taken when it was, and where the club stand when it comes to appointing a successor.

Simon, you and this club have got so many decisions right over the last few years, how did it go so wrong with the appointment of Ian Foster?

It clearly went wrong, I'm not sure it went as wrong as people generally think. We know that all processes that lead to decision making under conditions of uncertainty, it's certain that sometimes you will get things wrong.

We used the same process we used to get Schuey and Ryan and this time it didn't work out. Why didn't it work out? Results were bad and we need to stay up, it's as simple as that.

With hindsight Ian was in a very difficult position. I think the position was probably worse than we thought it was, that our first half of our season we out-resulted our performances, and the second half of the season we resulted in line with our performances.

So Ian was in a difficult position and I think the stress told on him and he didn't manage to develop the relationships that would have better enabled him to see him through it.

The great things about outcomes you get wrong is you learn from them and we have got meetings today (Tuesday) and this week to think about how to improve the process. If it works every time you never improve it. Maybe you never need to!

I feel desperately sorry for Ian it didn't work out but we just didn't have the time to let him sort it out. People seem to have forgotten after his first month here he was short-listed for manager-of-the-month so it went wrong very quickly after that and it was a great shame but we obviously had to do something in the end.

When did you realise you might need to make a change of manager/head coach?

About a week before we did, we kind of talked about it a bit during the international break. People said we should have done it during the international break.

This Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday routine of games makes making changes very difficult because you break the training routine and that can cause even more problems.

The atmosphere at Home Park during and after the Preston game was toxic, I think that's the right word. It's the most toxic I can recall for many, many years. Did you consider making a change immediately after that game?

No, we are not going to make a change just because the fans are yelling. We have made loads of decisions that have been unpopular with the fans, and we have ignored a lot of demands from the fans.

Look, I'm an investment guy. You become a good investment guy by being a contrarian. It makes you dig your feet in a bit more, particularly when that tiny minority of fans were being so abusive. I'm sorry but it makes us less likely to make a change they are demanding.

Did you consult with the players at all about making a change? Did the players come to you about making a change?

We have structures here so that some of the players were giving opinions to some of our management people. We had Neil Dewsnip as director of football and Andrew (Parkinson, CEO) was the line manager for Ian so we were getting some feedback.

So there is lines of communication between the dressing room and the boardroom?

There are. Now whether they are as good as they could be, it's a very difficult thing. Footballers tend to get antsy when they are not getting their own way. One thing we were very good at, and Schuey was very good at, was keeping the squad happy - not all the time - but most of the time when some even senior players weren't starting games.

Clearly, to win the League One title we obviously had to operate as a squad and that concept of the team that starts and the team that finishes was very powerful and I think it weakened a bit this season, so there was a bit more disruption going on.

Presumably you are going to have to pay-out a fair amount of money to Ian Foster, who was under contract until 2027, does that impact the transfer budget this summer?

Of course. Anything when money goes out unexpectedly it impacts the future. Yes, absolutely.

How much of an impact will that have?

We will see. As everybody knows we are looking for a new investor, so when we think about it now we have to have four budgets - we have to have a Championship budget with a new investor, a Championship budget without a new investor, a League One budget with a new investor and a League One budget without a new investor.

We can't say at the moment. The goal will be, as we have said since the beginning of this season, to find a new investor who is going to help us push further up the Championship than we are at the moment.

You appointed Neil Dewsnip and Kevin Nancekivell in temporary charge. Neil Warnock made it clear he would have done the job. What was the thinking behind going with Neil and Kevin?

Just continuity. Kevin has managed before - he managed that famous Scunthorpe game when we won but thanks to Sunderland at Southend it didn't keep us up.

Neil and Nance know the team very well. Nance is very well-liked by the squad. These next five games will be about morale, passion, intensity and I think Nance is the man to do that, though neither of them it should be clear want to be the next manager.

There has been some absolute c**p written on social media, which I have tried to avoid for the last month because it has been so nonsensical, about Neil (Dewsnip).

Neil has been fantastic at this club for four-and-a-half years, and the notion that he's this evil genius trying selfishly to position himself is just insulting. If people are going to go around saying that we are risking losing him and I would hate to lose him, he has been fantastic for us.

The manager pool will be similar to what you were looking at three months ago, with one or two differences. Are you going to look at somebody who was in that pool before, or will you look for a different type of manager this time?

We are going to talk about it this week, what are the learnings from this one going wrong. The basic criteria we are looking for are going to be similar. There will be a few additions I think we have to look for so that could mean the filtering process will lead to some different outcomes.

At the moment, I think it's too early to say exactly whether we are going to be looking for anything particularly different, but we want to play attacking football, and I think that was one of Ian's problems.

Ian figured out pretty early on how to tighten up the defence and that worked, but he needed to figure out how to tighten up the defence without strangling the attack, and clearly he never quite figured that out.

So a manager who is good at both ends of the pitch - and in the middle! - would be great, somebody who is innovative, who understands the culture here and likes the culture here.

I think what we have had here most of the time over the last five years is a really cohesive club, and a manager who understands he's a cog in that machine as opposed to somebody who is running everything is important.

We have lacked cohesion for the last three or four months. I'm not saying it's Ian's fault. I think there is fault on both sides, but we lacked that cohesiveness between the playing squad, the back office staff, the ownership, the fans. The sum of our parts was much greater than any of the individual parts, I think, so we have got to get back to that and have a manager who understands that.

Presumably you would want to appoint a new manager as soon as possible into the close season?

Absolutely. The applications are coming in. We will start the process once they start drying up.

Will the new person be called the head coach or the manager? Does it matter to you?

It does matter. Was Schuey a head coach or a manager? He was very much a coach but he was a little bit of a manager as well. We will want somebody who has got coaching chops, which Ian had.

It's not going to be an Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger type of manager who is in charge of everything. We have got people at the club who are really good and they will be giving advice to the head coach/manager.

We have the director of football/head coach structure here, but we are just such a whole here. It's just a bunch of people doing their jobs that are roughly defined and people getting on with it, rather than 'I'm the head coach, I'm not allowed to do this'.

I have just read a book, which basically revolves around data use at Liverpool, and it's quite clear that Jurgen Klopp is a bit of a coach and a bit of a manager.

If the data people say 'We are going to hire X' he can say no, but he usually agrees with them because they tend to be right, and that's the kind of manager we want, who is prepared to give input but prepared to listen throughout the club; somebody who accepts he has got a role as part of a well-functioning organisation is really important.

very arrogant interview imo and one that tells me that no mater who comes in if they arent schumacher mark 2 they will struggle to put their stamp on this team in terms of how we play who we buy etc without resistance from others at the club insisting they do things their way. In short in see another youth coach getting the job and it will be de ja vu.

very arrogant indeed there’s quite a few questions you could pick at …made me laugh fosters compo coming out of next seasons budget ..behave yourself super sigh what ever happened to Schumachers compo then where did that go then