Jimmy Abdou and Realistic Expectations

Iggy wrote:

shonbo wrote:

I agree with Iggy (not sure about Jamie Cureton tho')

My point is that to get out of this league we need quality not quantity, Cureton has banged in 15 goals for city this season and was bought with a lower budget than ours and a lower gate sustains his wages, players like that shouldn't be out of our reach. I seriously think that Brent has capped the wages we can pay a player but not the size of the squad, it baffles me.

Thats just what I've thought Iggy. Otherwise why are we bringing in so many mediocre poayers and loanees who are not noticeably better than what we have. If there is a wage cap on any individual player that will be half the reason for quantity over quality. Everyone knows a good striker will command more than a good full back. I cant make out some of the signings. This latest midfielder, another one who has hardly played for 2 years due to injury and we have just got Lowry back, so why another midfielder. What is the point in giving the likes of Copp a contract? It really baffles me.

An erudite OP, taking a bit of a hammering but only to be expected, so many just don't want to face reality.

It's going to be hard to get back to anywhere near the Garg zenith, Brent is never going to put his hand in anyone but the punter or the staff's pocket so while the 'football debts' hang around the GAW neck like a rotting albatross times are gonna be hard. Retention is far cheaper than replacement when a change in fortunes can not be guaranteed.

Happy days.

GOB wrote:

I see that Fallon is giving the usual promises and commenting of how much he loves Aberdeen following his two year lay off....he's after a new contract now!

Wonder if God will tell him to go back to Plymouth?

I stopped taking the OP seriously when he started bigging up Fletcher.

[quote="Lord Tisdale"]An erudite OP, taking a bit of a hammering but only to be expected, so many just don't want to face reality.

It's going to be hard to get back to anywhere near the Garg zenith, Brent is never going to put his hand in anyone but the punter or the staff's pocket so while the 'football debts' hang around the GAW neck like a rotting albatross times are gonna be hard. Retention is far cheaper than replacement when a change in fortunes can not be guaranteed.

Happy days.[/quote]

feck off we are a bigger club than you lot up the road, we may be down on our luck but why not expect to be higher than where we are? Why not ask for a smaller but better squad? That's why you are higher than us, that's the reality.

In fact can everybody that thinks that we should be happy to be second bottom please feck off. With fecking knobs and bells on.

Just read the John Lloyds post and in my opinion its just another lets blame the fans who wont turn up to watch sustandard football dig, argyle could support a premiership club but we have had a succesion of micky mouse owners with no ambition so why should people hand over their money to watch shite? for this club to be bottom of the fourh division is a fvcking disgrace for that i blame brent and his pathetic clueless manager, its aviva fans like Lloyd and co that keep this club crap.

Iggs' being an exile I wasnt aware of Cureton and his goals, hence the

I now agree with all your post now I understand

What always winds me up about the "the fans didn't back the club when we where good" is the fact that it's wrong.

I'm old enough to remember:

27,000 against Blackburn when Waiters got us promoted.

A full house against Bristol City when Smith was leading us to success

A packed ground several times under Shilton (when we didn't get promoted)

Packed out agains Wolves and Leeds Utd, first season in the CCC.

A sell out against Watford in the Cup.



But I can also remember the flip side:

Waiters team being broken up and the best manager we ever had being sacked

Smith having to wait months into the next season before he was allowed to buy Tynan

A supporter getting people to sign a petition to get the Board to buy Akos

The Board dithering for weeks about signing Halmosi.



You can all see the pattern can't you?

Argyle have a successful team, get promoted, spend sweet FA for a couple of years (£30,000 for Horswill, £100,000 for Crawford, is the Plymouth idea of "building on promotion") then the Board of the day say that the fans aren't backing the club and the old downward spiral starts again.

The teams that are successful in moving up the leagues are the ones that have a good team that gets them promoted and then IMMEDIATELY MAKES THAT TEAM BETTER. When Cloughie took Forest up he didn't say "Well, I'll see how this lot do for a season or two, then think about team strenghtening" No- he went straight out and made a good team better.

Just imagine how the average "fair weather" fan viewed Argyle after the Cup tie against Watford. He (or she) saw them put up a good display in the Cup and finish the season with five wins on the trot. Just as he's thinking about getting a season ticket he sees in the press that Argyle are stalling on signing the best player in the team! That's when and why apathy strikes

As for Argyle's current "predicament" I would point out that despite finishing Saturday knocking on the door of relegation, just a couple of weeks after losing to Dorchester (Dorchester for feck sake!!) in the Cup, Argyle had the best attendance in their division. Which leads me to two thoughts:

1. How the feck can we not be competative in this Division when spending is directly linked to turnover?

2. Argyle may not be the best supported when we're successful, but we're sure as hell the best supported when we're shite!

Grovehill wrote:

What always winds me up about the "the fans didn't back the club when we where good" is the fact that it's wrong.

I'm old enough to remember:

27,000 against Blackburn when Waiters got us promoted.

A full house against Bristol City when Smith was leading us to success

A packed ground several times under Shilton (when we didn't get promoted)

Packed out agains Wolves and Leeds Utd, first season in the CCC.

A sell out against Watford in the Cup.



But I can also remember the flip side:

Waiters team being broken up and the best manager we ever had being sacked

Smith having to wait months into the next season before he was allowed to buy Tynan

A supporter getting people to sign a petition to get the Board to buy Akos

The Board dithering for weeks about signing Halmosi.



You can all see the pattern can't you?

Argyle have a successful team, get promoted, spend sweet FA for a couple of years (£30,000 for Horswill, £100,000 for Crawford, is the Plymouth idea of "building on promotion") then the Board of the day say that the fans aren't backing the club and the old downward spiral starts again.

The teams that are successful in moving up the leagues are the ones that have a good team that gets them promoted and then IMMEDIATELY MAKES THAT TEAM BETTER. When Cloughie took Forest up he didn't say "Well, I'll see how this lot do for a season or two, then think about team strenghtening" No- he went straight out and made a good team better.

Just imagine how the average "fair weather" fan viewed Argyle after the Cup tie against Watford. He (or she) saw them put up a good display in the Cup and finish the season with five wins on the trot. Just as he's thinking about getting a season ticket he sees in the press that Argyle are stalling on signing the best player in the team! That's when and why apathy strikes

As for Argyle's current "predicament" I would point out that despite finishing Saturday knocking on the door of relegation, just a couple of weeks after losing to Dorchester (Dorchester for feck sake!!) in the Cup, Argyle had the best attendance in their division. Which leads me to two thoughts:

1. How the feck can we not be competative in this Division when spending is directly linked to turnover?

2. Argyle may not be the best supported when we're successful, but we're sure as hell the best supported when we're shite!

Halle-bleddy-lujah.

Greenskin wrote:

Grovehill wrote:

What always winds me up about the "the fans didn't back the club when we where good" is the fact that it's wrong.

I'm old enough to remember:

27,000 against Blackburn when Waiters got us promoted.

A full house against Bristol City when Smith was leading us to success

A packed ground several times under Shilton (when we didn't get promoted)

Packed out agains Wolves and Leeds Utd, first season in the CCC.

A sell out against Watford in the Cup.



But I can also remember the flip side:

Waiters team being broken up and the best manager we ever had being sacked

Smith having to wait months into the next season before he was allowed to buy Tynan

A supporter getting people to sign a petition to get the Board to buy Akos

The Board dithering for weeks about signing Halmosi.



You can all see the pattern can't you?

Argyle have a successful team, get promoted, spend sweet FA for a couple of years (£30,000 for Horswill, £100,000 for Crawford, is the Plymouth idea of "building on promotion") then the Board of the day say that the fans aren't backing the club and the old downward spiral starts again.

The teams that are successful in moving up the leagues are the ones that have a good team that gets them promoted and then IMMEDIATELY MAKES THAT TEAM BETTER. When Cloughie took Forest up he didn't say "Well, I'll see how this lot do for a season or two, then think about team strenghtening" No- he went straight out and made a good team better.

Just imagine how the average "fair weather" fan viewed Argyle after the Cup tie against Watford. He (or she) saw them put up a good display in the Cup and finish the season with five wins on the trot. Just as he's thinking about getting a season ticket he sees in the press that Argyle are stalling on signing the best player in the team! That's when and why apathy strikes

As for Argyle's current "predicament" I would point out that despite finishing Saturday knocking on the door of relegation, just a couple of weeks after losing to Dorchester (Dorchester for feck sake!!) in the Cup, Argyle had the best attendance in their division. Which leads me to two thoughts:

1. How the feck can we not be competative in this Division when spending is directly linked to turnover?

2. Argyle may not be the best supported when we're successful, but we're sure as hell the best supported when we're shite!

Halle-bleddy-lujah.

HALLE - Halle-bleddy-lujah!

What I really cannot grasp is why some of us categorically refuse to accept what is so clearly and blatantly obvious.

here here

Realistic expectations= about 90th.

John might be a nice chap, but his post is probably a million miles from my point of view, here in Plymouth, certainly 200 miles.
As a local, I'm not alright, thank you very much,should any old "risk taker" want to develop inappropriately in the park I use nearly every day. And since when has the modern world given success to ONLY "risk takers" ? What of the NHS, the Co-op, John Lewis, and the Nationwide, that fortunately avoided the carpetbagging of those wonderful philanthropic risk takers, unlike the Halifax. Could a bunch of privayeers ever build the NHS ?
Sorry John, that post sounded like Webby was behind you prodding you with a stick.... your low attendance myth is old hat and was shattered yet again by Blackpool recently.
As for the quote below

Quote :

In which case, Argyle fans may need to prepare for a very long, slow and painful crawl towards self-sustainability, almost certainly dependent on stop-gap funding of the type James Brent has been forced into already this season.

How glad we all are to have a club rescued by this marvellous philanthropist.
I can assure James I'm already prepared for a long slow painful crawl.... by standing proudly upright and keeping my distance, like the majority of long term Argyle fans I know. I'm finding other things to do, an old trick I learned when McCauley was in charge ( he proves these FAILED risk takers, who actually didn't take any risks in reality, were in and out of the Argyle hot seat long before the stadium was sold ).
You crawl if you want to, not my scene.

It's not the first time Mr Lloyd has brown nosed Mr Brent on the Internet,

I've always had tremendous respect for John Lloyd's views and comments.

I seem to remember a particularly outstanding post during the administration process which ended with the words "wake me up when it's a football club again".

I'm sad to say that PAFC is still an amateur outfit......an old boys club, with hangers on playing at being footballistas.

It won't change until either Brent sorts out a proper football chairman and CEO and takes a real back seat, gets rid of Fletcher, Webb and Newell, or sells the club to someone else.

Go back to sleep Mr Lloyd.

ATD............... an oasis of reality in a sea of Avivaness.

It's been an interesting debate and proof that PASOTI and ATD can discuss matters like this in civility (mostly...!)

To be absolutely clear on a couple of points:-

i) the relative merits of Jimmy Abdou wasn't really the key to my OP - he is just an avatar for it. A player of his type - limited, but effective - has gone on to forge a decent career in the second tier since we let him go, while we have descended into the depths, once again. To me, his moderate success symbolises where we are now. I wasn't that disappointed when he left, but it's obvious he'd be a darn good player for us now. He went up and stayed there, while we went down, and how.

ii) I'm not blaming the "fans" for our failures. Not one bit. I'm just pointing out what happens. What always seems to happen at Home Park. Because we really do need to learn from it, at some point. I'm noting that we have, historically, always failed to build on periods of success in order to create a real bedrock of support that club owners, whoever they are, can rely on when calculating the finances. It always slips back. We're not unique in that, by any means. But all we can point to, after the great success of the first Sturrock era, is that we have added maybe two thousand fans to our hard core. It was down to 4k under Kevin Hodges, now it's about 6k instead.

And that figure is important. For it seems to be a commonly accepted figure amongst those at the club that about 2k of our attendance income is "set aside" for the paying down of the historic debts left to us by the New World regime.

So we come back to the harsh realities.

We haven't got as much money as we ought to, from simply looking at our attendances, because we have a giant monthly credit card bill to pay, every month, for five years, to players, staff and all the other bodies getting their money back from James Brent and his incarnation of our club.

That is a massive handbrake on the ability of this club to build up a head of steam and get it back to where we all know we should be - at the top of the third tier or in the bottom half of the second tier. That is a natural target for all who know their Argyle history and I'd expect us to be at that level again at some point.

But what we do need to keep in mind is that we're hamstrung by these debts and that the progress towards that target is going to a darn sight harder than it deserves to be.

It'll be slow. It'll be tedious at times. But we'll get there, I'm sure of that.

Then we'll find out if the people running the club at that point have learnt anything from our history. Or not.

PS - I speak for no-one but myself. I listen to many, disregard a few and form a synthesis of opinion that reflects reality, as I see it. If I think a person has good intentions and conducts himself with dignity and respect for others, then I'll pay due respect to their position. If they don't, then I won't.

Whatever!

John_Lloyd wrote:

It's been an interesting debate and proof that PASOTI and ATD can discuss matters like this in civility (mostly...!)

To be absolutely clear on a couple of points:-

i) the relative merits of Jimmy Abdou wasn't really the key to my OP - he is just an avatar for it. A player of his type - limited, but effective - has gone on to forge a decent career in the second tier since we let him go, while we have descended into the depths, once again. To me, his moderate success symbolises where we are now. I wasn't that disappointed when he left, but it's obvious he'd be a darn good player for us now. He went up and stayed there, while we went down, and how.

ii) I'm not blaming the "fans" for our failures. Not one bit. I'm just pointing out what happens. What always seems to happen at Home Park. Because we really do need to learn from it, at some point. I'm noting that we have, historically, always failed to build on periods of success in order to create a real bedrock of support that club owners, whoever they are, can rely on when calculating the finances. It always slips back. We're not unique in that, by any means. But all we can point to, after the great success of the first Sturrock era, is that we have added maybe two thousand fans to our hard core. It was down to 4k under Kevin Hodges, now it's about 6k instead.

And that figure is important. For it seems to be a commonly accepted figure amongst those at the club that about 2k of our attendance income is "set aside" for the paying down of the historic debts left to us by the New World regime.

So we come back to the harsh realities.

We haven't got as much money as we ought to, from simply looking at our attendances, because we have a giant monthly credit card bill to pay, every month, for five years, to players, staff and all the other bodies getting their money back from James Brent and his incarnation of our club.

That is a massive handbrake on the ability of this club to build up a head of steam and get it back to where we all know we should be - at the top of the third tier or in the bottom half of the second tier. That is a natural target for all who know their Argyle history and I'd expect us to be at that level again at some point.

But what we do need to keep in mind is that we're hamstrung by these debts and that the progress towards that target is going to a darn sight harder than it deserves to be.

It'll be slow. It'll be tedious at times. But we'll get there, I'm sure of that.

Then we'll find out if the people running the club at that point have learnt anything from our history. Or not.

PS - I speak for no-one but myself. I listen to many, disregard a few and form a synthesis of opinion that reflects reality, as I see it. If I think a person has good intentions and conducts himself with dignity and respect for others, then I'll pay due respect to their position. If they don't, then I won't.

Some of us learnt from it in the 1960's,1970's,1980's and 2000's and have been saying as much for years and years but were castigated by the complacent "trust in stapes" brigade and other assorted pro authority types for doing so.I would doubt very much if the lessons have been absorbed and understood even now,when the lessons are as plain as the nose on your face.


BTW,how much are these giant credit card monthly payments that you speak of? I was under the impression that the debt was to repaid at an annual rate of 17% plus half of any unbudgeted income,which i would doubt amounts to any earth shattering monthly payments.I stand to be corrected.

John_Lloyd wrote:

For it seems to be a commonly accepted figure amongst those at the club that about 2k of our attendance income is "set aside" for the paying down of the historic debts left to us by the New World regime.

As someone who isn't privvy to the whisperings of the inner circles, this was new to me.

I know he's a businessman, and I don't expect him to be an obsessively green fan, but if he's prepared to asset strip the club of it's stadium and the surrounding land for his own benefit, then it'd seem somewhat fair to also chip in with the debts of those who went the best part of 10 months with no pay in order for that situation to be created.

This "2k of our attendance income is "set aside" for the paying down of the historic debts" seems very random and misleading to me. What percentage of our annual turnover does that represent?.

Just purely guessing I'd estimate turnover to be around £3-3.5m. The debts that need to be paid are £60k per year to the old Trust? and 7% of the football creditors debt or around £200k per year?. I make that less than 10% or less than 600 of our attendance. Are there more debts we haven't been told about?

Easier said than done I admit but we only need to revisit 2001-02. Get a decent manager in, allow him to sign a quality spine and players who can do a decent job in other positions. Once the team is built and challenging, everything else will fall into place, profitably.

The fact that you accept that we have a natural position due to our history and are seemingly happy we'll be back there one day disappoints me greatly John as it's sooo indicative of all that's always been wrong with this club. The acceptance of (at best) mediocrity and the lack of ambition have hampered the club time and again. With that attitude the cycle will just repeat itself time and time again. At my first match, more than 50 years ago my great uncles, who took me along, were truly optimistic having just missed out/chucked away promotion to the top tier the season before that after 50 years of support their dreams were soon to be realized. I had my first 5 years in the second tier and judge any time spent below that as not acceptable. It's a consolation that my dear departed uncles didn't have to see another 50 years of failure.

I am increasingly coming to the view that Brent only "saved" the club as a facilitator and all the deferred debt is being paid by you and I, well maybe not me anymore!

If the owner isn't going to indulge himself by putting his hand into his pocket to invest in future success, then he's not the owner I want. If it turns out he has invested in any significant way then he should firing the asses of the staff that have failed to improve the on field product.

Grovehill wrote:

2. Argyle may not be the best supported when we're successful, but we're sure as hell the best supported when we're shite!

Oh purlees !

When are you boys ever going to grasp the nettle ?

Luton have been wallowing in the conference for an age now yet they are still averaging more, Bradford average a lot more despite flirting with the drop for some time, that's without looking at the "Big Clubs" that have recently spent time in the doldrums, I have watched the mighty ECFC play in front of crowds of over 30k in the 3rd Division in the last few years when the rather original chant of "you're shit cos you're playing us" rang out, they knew it too but that didn't stop them turning out in numbers you could only dream of. Norwich were rock bottom of the 3rd but it didn't stop them selling out their ground.

The OP dealt in the kind of realism that gives you a chance, this comment deals in the type of howl at the moon delusional nonsense which will undoubtedly result in your current malaise going postal.

Happy days.

Brent bought the club knowing full well what the terms were-in fact he set them out on a firm "take it or leave it" basis. So it's hippocritical, to say the least, if he and his supporters now blame the rolled over Football Creditor debts for the club's current plight, or winge about having to "bail the club out"

Even if one accepts the mysterious "2000 fans per match" figure to pay the FC debts (30% or real income or, if you prefer 25% of budgeted income) that still leaves the football club with a healthy (for this league) bedrock of 4000 fans to finance the club-still well above the average attendance for this league. Yet this position among the upper echelons of attendances (which dictates turnover, which dictates the amount to spend on the football team) is not being reflected in any way on the field of play.

My realistic expectations are based on the fact that, even with the FC debts to pay, PAFC should be able to finance a team quite capable of escaping this league into the next one up, not down.

The "reality" Turdsdale (see what I did there, clever eh?) is that if we just managed things better we wouldn't be right at the bottom of the league, then me and people like me (I am staying away this season after religiously following the team since I was a boy) would be there paying our money at the gate. We don't ned to be challenging for a top two place (I believe I have already said that) we just need to see some improvement on last year, considering where we finished last year that shouldn't be too hard should it? So once again take your sanctimonious arse and do one, we shouldnt have to put up with it and we won't.