My Take On Mr Brent & His Plans

GOB wrote:

Indeed it is Czar and to add yet more fuel, PAFC is the best supported Club in the country to have never reached the top flight.

It doesn't take a genius to work it out does it, just a developer with his eyes elsewhere supported by large egos with their eyes focused firmly on hand outs.


Just ask yourself, if you were a businessman looking to start a professional football club business in a city the size of Plymouth, would you really plan something that is so short sighted?

but you forget GOB plymouth needs a 1500 seater ice arena and even that is too small for most big name productions to come here or an ice hockey team to start up lol.

Aint that the rub AoM!

For anyone that has a true and well intended interest in the Club and professional League football in Plymouth, it defies all logic to accept the present proposal.

And it turns out that our beloved associate director would like a bigger stand he just keeps pointing to the fact that his stand is free!
Let's just examine the "free" angle shall we?

PCC are paying a large chunk of it, I have read figures of £10 m and £30 m being given to Brent to complete the HHP project, I believe the £10 m figure was just for the Grandstand. Please feel free to correct me on any of these figures BTW.

Brent also owns the land the mini stand is being built on, he is in effect building a stand on his land so the stand will then become his. In future the money will go to Brent when said land is sold?

I understand that the car park has been bought by Brent's pension fund? With the Ministand being built on a smaller footprint than it was previously have the club been compensated for the extra ground that the ice rink will take up?

As well as Brent receiving the sale price of the new Ministand when he sells the club he will also have several retail units underneath the Ministand that have been built on club land that hasn't been bought by Brent, have we been compensated for this?

It seems to me that Brent is in a win win situation, whatever happens to the club, Brent will profit, whether via retail units in rent or by future sales income derived by the club, the only thing that is free is the club to Brent, he has come in, bought the club for less than the pound that Ridsdale was talking about, PCC are on the whole paying for the Ministand, it unlocks development projects around the city worth about £150m and the whole venture has cost Brent under half a million quid (the market value of the car park land).
We as a club still have debts in excess of £3m what with the wages and the money that Brent has had to loan us because of his lack of management. If he hadn't saddled us with these debts and bought the club like anybody else would have had to do we could have raised the extra money to build the stand fit for purpose.

There is no such thing as a free lunch so the saying goes.

The stand will be owned by PCC, whether it would increase the value of the football club per se, is up for debate.

That said, for all the honesty and integrity his followers like to point to, I'm absolutely sure what he wants will prevail whilst lip service is paid to the naysayers and it'll be no fecking satisfaction saying 5 years down the line..."well we told you so".

I've gone right off football in general, anyway.

If he builds this tinpot stand, that's it for me. Time to play more golf and join the barmy army

Yes, the stand will be built on land owned by the council. The club lease that land with the option that crops up every few years to buy it. The terms of the lease will increase if we rise up the league. (If anyone's interested I will find the figures that I have stored.)

This makes it all the more ridiculous if neither the club nor the council will derive any income from those retail units that are to be put there. They are on council land leased by the club. Akkeron bought the rest of the site NOT the footprint of the grandstand.

Ive said from day one the parallels between Mr Brent and Firoz Kassam are alarming similar...

argyl3 wrote:

Ive said from day one the parallels between Mr Brent and Firoz Kassam are alarming similar...

Looks familiar. Did he befriend the Oxford equivalent of Nool n Gool to smooth his passage too ?

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No tring he wasn't as subtle about it

The club will probably do an "oxford" in a few years being sold off for a pound with debts and no tangiable increase in value with all of value being owned or rented off "someone else" I saw and warned of this happening when James Brent first showed his hand as a "reluctant bidder"

So our only hope now is that the Council reject Brents plans for the Ministand?!

I remember when i was a kid torquays home end was a little stand called the "mini stand, every argyle kid used to pile in the ministand and boot the torquay nerds out of it! how we used to take the piss out of torquays ministand never thought forty years later a real merchant banker would take over the club and knock down our old "GRANDSTAND to build argyle's very own mini stand supported by so called super argyle fans! sad times years of non league could lie ahead

Sufferedsince68 wrote:

I remember when i was a kid torquays home end was a little stand called the "mini stand, every argyle kid used to pile in the ministand and boot the torquay nerds out of it! how we used to take the piss out of torquays ministand never thought forty years later a real merchant banker would take over the club and knock down our old "GRANDSTAND to build argyle's very own mini stand supported by so called super argyle fans! sad times years of non league could lie ahead

I just find it disappointing about how people seem to be lying down and accepting this sub-standard construction with a shrug of the shoulders and with an attitude of "oh well better then nothing",once this is built that's it,forget the expansion, it will never happen,Brent is mugging us off with downright LIES about how the capacity can be increased.
His jam-boys Nool and more recently X Isle are trying their best to verbally crush any opposition to the mini-stand plans and depressingly seem to be succeeding, i see the latest observations over on the farm seem to be pointing towards the capacity of the stand being closer to 4,500 then the 5,000 as previously thought due to gangways and boxes etc, in fact someone pointed out that the blueprints are misleading and the "stand" will actually be lower in profile then the frigging horseshoe ffs.
I also pointed out on another thread previously without much response that there are teams in the feckin Conference CONFERENCE that will have bigger main stands then Brenty boys proposed abomination, its an absolute feckin joke and im surprised the Trust are not taking things a stage further in opposition to this bollocks.
The Council have the final say on this next month i believe, where are the petitions? where are the letters of protest? Why are the AFT not wholeheartedly REJECTING these plans? What happened to some sort of pact with the friends of central park to de-rail these plans?

What have people on here done to work for an improvement on the current offer from Mr Brent?

knecht wrote:

What have people on here done to work for an improvement on the current offer from Mr Brent?

Ahhh the old "what did you do during the war" i was wondering when that was coming, you're starting to sound like Nool, i just think it would be appropriate for it to come from the trust, the organisation that claims to represent our views
Dont worry, im drafting a letter to the council as we speak.

argyl3 wrote:

Ive said from day one the parallels between Mr Brent and Firoz Kassam are alarming similar...

So, in your case... From earlier today then?




PS. Welcome.

Punchy,

give the Trust a chance! Remember they all have jobs and there is helluva lot of information to inwardly digest and consider. They have said they will be consulting other people with knowledge or expertise in building projects and other related subjects about the proposals.

The last thing we need is for the Trust to make statements that turn out to be factually incorrect or indeed wrong. That would just leave the door wide open for others to dismiss any findings the Trust might or might not declare.

I'm sure they are very aware that a lot of fans are very worried about the clubs league position, the new grandstand and whether it is the best deal for Argyle, both in the short term and more specifically the long term.

I'm afraid some patience will be needed.

punchdrunk wrote:

knecht wrote:

What have people on here done to work for an improvement on the current offer from Mr Brent?

Ahhh the old "what did you do during the war" i was wondering when that was coming, you're starting to sound like Nool, i just think it would be appropriate for it to come from the trust, the organisation that claims to represent our views
Dont worry, im drafting a letter to the council as we speak.

Christ, it'll be like Baldrick's poem about the German guns. Use red crayons punchie as they convey a sense of ANGRY

For starters we need to know the nitty gritty of the plans and that information is hard to come by, vague details and assurances abound and HP is deathly quiet with detail.

Richard Blight wrote:

Punchy,

give the Trust a chance! Remember they all have jobs and there is helluva lot of information to inwardly digest and consider. They have said they will be consulting other people with knowledge or expertise in building projects and other related subjects about the proposals.

The last thing we need is for the Trust to make statements that turn out to be factually incorrect or indeed wrong. That would just leave the door wide open for others to dismiss any findings the Trust might or might not declare.

I'm sure they are very aware that a lot of fans are very worried about the clubs league position, the new grandstand and whether it is the best deal for Argyle, both in the short term and more specifically the long term.

I'm afraid some patience will be needed.

Time is running out, like i said the Council have the final say next month.
@Hairy....usual snidey response from you i see.

punchdrunk wrote:

knecht wrote:

What have people on here done to work for an improvement on the current offer from Mr Brent?

Ahhh the old "what did you do during the war" i was wondering when that was coming, you're starting to sound like Nool, i just think it would be appropriate for it to come from the trust, the organisation that claims to represent our views
Dont worry, im drafting a letter to the council as we speak.

How does that sound like "What did you do during the war"?

How does that sound like "Nool"?

So are you leaving it to the Trust or are you writing a letter? It's not clear from what you've said. Do you think the Trust aren't doing anything?

A bit like your snidey aimed at knecht. You're just like nool - dishing it out but unable to take it.

Iggy wrote:

For starters we need to know the nitty gritty of the plans and that information is hard to come by, vague details and assurances abound and HP is deathly quiet with detail.

More than that, hairy, the details keep changing. First all the footprint would be for the club then some is taken by Akkeron. First a single tier - then two tiers. Then the horseshoe couldn't be developed then it could by 2,500 seats. Then by 4,500. Then there was to be one retail unit not for the club's benefit - next one or two - next all of them save for a smaller club shop. Where will it all end?!

I'm interested what the council will have to say about all this - both the planning department and the elected councillors.

knecht wrote:

What have people on here done to work for an improvement on the current offer from Mr Brent?

"Working for an improvement on the offer" may take many different forms. For a few on here, it may not mean taking the most obvious form, i.e. attending a presentation and voicing displeasure.

There are other ways of getting your point across and your message 'out there'.