FCUK THE STAND BRENT YOU UTTER CNUT....

I thought it was refering to the semi-final aswell

mcfry wrote:

Lord Tisdale wrote:

mcfry wrote:

Lord Tisdale wrote:

mcfry wrote:

But how much of that is cash and how much is assets, or if you prefer false money?

The difference with Brent is that he knows the meaning of the word asset, where the muppets hold paper he holds physical assets, where Heaney had massive debt offset by inflated asset values Brenty has bought up, not to mention stolen, assets at cheap money, hey, he even did the magic trick of selling something he never paid for, Gnome Park, for 1.6 millionish, knock the boy all you like but he sure knows how to turn a buck.

While he might have the so called physical assets we don't know if they are paid for or not
I could go and buy a brand new Mercedes, or any other expensive make, on a hp agreement but I am definately not rich

I give up.

Oh dear, a bit too complicated for you to perceive?

Go find a ten year old to explain why you are being dim pal.

ps. Plus nobody believes you could get finance to buy a Merc from anyone but FES, signing over your benefits just wouldn't wash, hey, FES wouldn't work either as they don't accept a rent book for a piss stained council flat as collateral, so your analogy was both misplaced and ridiculous

ejh wrote:

I honestly wouldn't object to Tisdale receiving a nomination for some sort of recognition by the British Empire for the job he has done with that low ranking community club.

"British Empire"?

How fooking old and befuddled is this guy?

ejh wrote:

We are a club who is actually in crisis because the 6,000 + crowds are not big enough, and our lowest for decades. Tell me, when did Exeter last have a 6,000+ crowd? 

Whoa, hold on there boy, I seem to recall that the last time you frequented the nether regions of the Football League your crowds dropped to the industry standard, sub 4k, and if you want to see what sort of crowds a real "big club" get when times are hard just check out Pompey's attendances, comfortably more than double yours.

ps. If you really want to convince anyone that PAFC are a big club you are going to have to start making comparisons with "big clubs" not self confessed minnows like us.

Compare yourselves with Pompey, or 'fud who made the League Cup Final while in this div and averaged 12k while in a similar position to you.

An ST at Brad'fud last season was £199 which is a fairly decent price- over 8k were sold- added to that was the decent cup runs which would have boosted the POTD gate through the season. I doubt we'd sell as many if ours cost the same, but quite a few Argyle fans have stopped because of the cost (as well as the shit football).

Lord Tisdale wrote:

ejh wrote:

We are a club who is actually in crisis because the 6,000 + crowds are not big enough, and our lowest for decades. Tell me, when did Exeter last have a 6,000+ crowd? 

Whoa, hold on there boy, I seem to recall that the last time you frequented the nether regions of the Football League your crowds dropped to the industry standard, sub 4k, and if you want to see what sort of crowds a real "big club" get when times are hard just check out Pompey's attendances, comfortably more than double yours.

ps. If you really want to convince anyone that PAFC are a big club you are going to have to start making comparisons with "big clubs" not self confessed minnows like us.

Compare yourselves with Pompey, or 'fud who made the League Cup Final while in this div and averaged 12k while in a similar position to you.

Is this the same Pompey that won the FA Cup, played in the Prem, had a team of internationals, many of which have gone on to play in the Champions League?

Yes they are a big club.

Are they bigger than Argyle - well, is an Alsatian bigger than a Spaniel?

Are they bigger than Exeter? Is an Alsatian bigger than a yappy terrier..... or more like a hamster in the bedroom corner,  running around its wheel making loads of noise? You don't have to answer that.

As for Pompey, their crowds... they are new to this. We have endured three seasons of it. Their crowds will drop if they are still here in 36 months time. And if they start that season like we have just done.

And the last comparison with Pompey - would a 4, 000 seater 'Grandstand' be enough for their fans? For their club? Regardless of whether it was free or not, of course it wouldn't. They know what their potential is and where they should aim to be, even if their next month's fixtures is Scunthorpe, Accrington, Cheltenham and Exeter... they know it should be Birmingham, Leeds...moving up to Everton, Chelsea. And their ground is absolutely crap.

ejh wrote:

As for Pompey, their crowds... they are new to this. We have endured three seasons of it.

And the last comparison with Pompey - would a 4, 000 seater 'Grandstand' be enough for their fans? For their club? Regardless of whether it was free or not, of course it wouldn't.  And their ground is absolutely crap.

Actually you haven't, this is your third season, the diddy stand is 4800ish not 4000 and yes I guess they would take it if it were for free, just like anyone else with a modicum of sense.

Are you shore you are a real fan cos you seem to know fook all about footy in general and the shiite club you purport to support in particular?

Face it chummy, PAFC is not now and has never been a "big club", it has had half a dozen good seasons interspersing decades of mediocrity and one decent City performance last season would have put you into the Conference, where you still wouldn't have been the biggest club.

Even the completely broken down version of Argyle we have now is the kind of club Exeter desperately wishes it could be.

We could fit your entire home support into Brent's new stand, so I dont expect you to understand what it is like watching your team with 20, 000 fans in and wishing you could fit more.

Anyway Tis when you up talk off free stand surely you have to factor in the odd £5m or so debt that Brent against the wishes of the football league refused to pay which most owners would have had to stump up to buy said club. The club is paying the purchase price for him to rape us. Clever cnut I have to agree but think beyond the propaganda.

ejh wrote:

Even the completely broken down version of Argyle we have now is the kind of club Exeter desperately wishes it could be.

What, crap, fighting off relegation by a whisker every season, owned by a userer who couldn't give a shiite about the club or the fans with a massive schism in the fan base?

Are you mad?

If I had to go to games and watch some Cityesque version of Porky laughing down at me from the directors box I think I should be physically sick. Owned by usury Brent or the fans? Pretty easy one, our last users in the history of our club did time for it. Fighting relegation or competing for promotion? 'nuther easy one. Pack of self agrandising super fans or friendly souls committed to the long term future of the club they brought back from the edge? Dull boring swathe of empty green plastic seats or homely old Sid James?

The case for the defence rests.

Got to agree with LT re porkie, the very thought that I would have to stand and pay reverence to this self publicising, devious, idiot, with delusions of grandeur would certainly prevent me from attending games.

To have him as your club saviour and fans representative really is making you a laughing stock, but then again you let him get away with it so why not?

Iggy wrote:

Anyway Tis when you up talk off free stand surely you have to factor in the odd £5m or so debt that Brent against the wishes of the football league refused to pay which most owners would have had to stump up to buy said club. The club is paying the purchase price for him to rape us. Clever cnut I have to agree but think beyond the propaganda.

Nothing to see there, the club couldn't pay five bob let alone five Bar.

PAFC will be paying for as long as you have a hole in your arse, but that is just a bit of the money you stole, the Diddy Stand will be wholly financed through the enabling development of HHP, PAFC will not pay one penny for that, you will get to the end of a process with a ground that fans of any other lil' ol' fourth div/Conference club would give their eye teeth for, despite the ten point deduction it will most surely cost you.

Me? I would love for Sidney to get a bit of a makeover, I wouldn't hanker after a huge swathe of empty red plastic seats though, a couple of tidy little covered terraces to replace your Saturday home and the old grandstand, 10k cap to accomodate the odd cup draw should Tw@sdale ever work out how to win a cup match, that would be nice, but we can't afford it and we have no intention of mugging off the St.John Ambulance so it will have to wait.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Iggy wrote:

Anyway Tis when you up talk off free stand surely you have to factor in the odd £5m or so debt that Brent against the wishes of the football league refused to pay which most owners would have had to stump up to buy said club. The club is paying the purchase price for him to rape us. Clever cnut I have to agree but think beyond the propaganda.

Nothing to see there, the club couldn't pay five bob let alone five Bar.

PAFC will be paying for as long as you have a hole in your arse, but that is just a bit of the money you stole, the Diddy Stand will be wholly financed through the enabling development of HHP, PAFC will not pay one penny for that, you will get to the end of a process with a ground that fans of any other lil' ol' fourth div/Conference club would give their eye teeth for, despite the ten point deduction it will most surely cost you.

Me? I would love for Sidney to get a bit of a makeover, I wouldn't hanker after a huge swathe of empty red plastic seats though, a couple of tidy little covered terraces to replace your Saturday home and the old grandstand, 10k cap to accomodate the odd cup draw should Tw@sdale ever work out how to win a cup match, that would be nice, but we can't afford it and we have no intention of mugging off the St.John Ambulance so it will have to wait.

Didn't Exeter do the same to the builders who built the Big [sic] Bank stand?

Chemical Ali wrote:

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Iggy wrote:

Anyway Tis when you up talk off free stand surely you have to factor in the odd £5m or so debt that Brent against the wishes of the football league refused to pay which most owners would have had to stump up to buy said club. The club is paying the purchase price for him to rape us. Clever cnut I have to agree but think beyond the propaganda.

Nothing to see there, the club couldn't pay five bob let alone five Bar.

PAFC will be paying for as long as you have a hole in your arse, but that is just a bit of the money you stole, the Diddy Stand will be wholly financed through the enabling development of HHP, PAFC will not pay one penny for that, you will get to the end of a process with a ground that fans of any other lil' ol' fourth div/Conference club would give their eye teeth for, despite the ten point deduction it will most surely cost you.

Me? I would love for Sidney to get a bit of a makeover, I wouldn't hanker after a huge swathe of empty red plastic seats though, a couple of tidy little covered terraces to replace your Saturday home and the old grandstand, 10k cap to accomodate the odd cup draw should Tw@sdale ever work out how to win a cup match, that would be nice, but we can't afford it and we have no intention of mugging off the St.John Ambulance so it will have to wait.

Didn't Exeter do the same to the builders who built the Big [sic] Bank stand?

and cowshed and their development behind it.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

ejh wrote:

I honestly wouldn't object to Tisdale receiving a nomination for some sort of recognition by the British Empire for the job he has done with that low ranking community club.

"British Empire"?

How fooking old and befuddled is this guy?

Are you so ignorant as to not know what MBE, OBE and CBE stand for? Not so much a question of age as intelligence, when the likes of Bradley Wiggins and David Beckham are receiving these honours  

Can't argue with our past difficulties, shameful.

That's when we decided against the sugar daddy/private ownership model and went for trust ownership. I urged your lot to do the same but to no avail I'm afraid.

They say the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing but expect a different result,

How's life on the farm?

Zackly Sturtz, lots of us saw it all coming but got named freaks, weirdos, witches, junkies and whores, they still haven't said sorry.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

mcfry wrote:

Lord Tisdale wrote:

mcfry wrote:

Lord Tisdale wrote:

mcfry wrote:

But how much of that is cash and how much is assets, or if you prefer false money?

The difference with Brent is that he knows the meaning of the word asset, where the muppets hold paper he holds physical assets, where Heaney had massive debt offset by inflated asset values Brenty has bought up, not to mention stolen, assets at cheap money, hey, he even did the magic trick of selling something he never paid for, Gnome Park, for 1.6 millionish, knock the boy all you like but he sure knows how to turn a buck.

While he might have the so called physical assets we don't know if they are paid for or not
I could go and buy a brand new Mercedes, or any other expensive make, on a hp agreement but I am definately not rich

I give up.

Oh dear, a bit too complicated for you to perceive?

Go find a ten year old to explain why you are being dim pal.

ps. Plus nobody believes you could get finance to buy a Merc from anyone but FES, signing over your benefits just wouldn't wash, hey, FES wouldn't work either as they don't accept a rent book for a piss stained council flat as collateral, so your analogy was both misplaced and ridiculous

I see I was right then  

Sturtz wrote:

Can't argue with our past difficulties, shameful.

Oh come on Sturtz are you really saying that knocking multi billion dollar construction giant Mowlem for what would amount to a rounding error in their accounts is in the same league as ripping off the St.John Ambliance and all those faithful club workers who never got paid?

ejh wrote:

Lord Tisdale wrote:

ejh wrote:

I honestly wouldn't object to Tisdale receiving a nomination for some sort of recognition by the British Empire for the job he has done with that low ranking community club.

"British Empire"?

How fooking old and befuddled is this guy?

Are you so ignorant as to not know what MBE, OBE and CBE stand for? Not so much a question of age as intelligence, when the likes of Bradley Wiggins and David Beckham are receiving these honours  

Ok, I'll play.

Kindly list for the viewers those nations who currently consider themselves to be part of the "British Empire" and explain what relevance a bunch of out dated awards which are doled out by whichever foppish ex Eton tw@ happens to be living for free on the workers in order to influence sad fecks into voting for him again, or even as a sop to the Brentalikes who pay his political bills in order to get fookloads of cash in return?

I'm betting you still watch the Queen's message live on Xmas day before falling asleep in front of Emmerdale.

ejh wrote:

Even the completely broken down version of Argyle we have now is the kind of club Exeter desperately wishes it could be.

...Is the wrong answer.

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a passionate believer in fan-ownership and while everything upstairs is not 100% hunky-dory at ECFC it's a thousand times better than the parasite/host relationship at the Theatre of Screams. As an old far-lefty I also loathe individuals like Brent and organisations like his erstwhile employers, so the idea that I'd want ECFC to be a club owned by someone like that is abhorrent beyond belief. In fact I'm not sure whether I'd still be able to attend home games if a regime like yours was getting my money.

If you were a fan-owned club without the sinister ownership and superfan turncoats then I might envy your stadium and fanbase a little bit - but on the other hand being a small club in a small city doesn't bother me, as PAFC fans seem to think it should. In fact there are some things about it I actually prefer, as strange as that might sound to some of you.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

ejh wrote:

Lord Tisdale wrote:

ejh wrote:

I honestly wouldn't object to Tisdale receiving a nomination for some sort of recognition by the British Empire for the job he has done with that low ranking community club.

"British Empire"?

How fooking old and befuddled is this guy?

Are you so ignorant as to not know what MBE, OBE and CBE stand for? Not so much a question of age as intelligence, when the likes of Bradley Wiggins and David Beckham are receiving these honours  

Ok, I'll play.

Kindly list for the viewers those nations who currently consider themselves to be part of the "British Empire" and explain what relevance a bunch of out dated awards which are doled out by whichever foppish ex Eton tw@ happens to be living for free on the workers in order to influence sad fecks into voting for him again, or even as a sop to the Brentalikes who pay his political bills in order to get fookloads of cash in return?

I'm betting you still watch the Queen's message live on Xmas day before falling asleep in front of Emmerdale.

Just admit you are stupid and stop trying to speak in riddles and change topics.

I've had enough of that from X Isle on pasoti to last a lifetime, and your dumb post has just reminded me that he hasn't been posting for a fair few weeks?? From an opinion on everyrhing to one of the silent majority?.

xisle im sure has worked out hes been stitched over like the rest of the pasoti 'elite' have been.

some furious backpeddling is required.

ejh wrote:

Plymouth is a big club...

To some extent it depends on how you define what a big club is - It's possible to argue that there are only a handful of truly big clubs in the world. However banter aside, I have honestly never thought of Argyle as a truly big club in terms of the Football League as a whole, rather than a medium-sized one. In my experience I'm not alone in that belief, excluding other City fans of course. You are undoubtedly a big club in this division in the modern era and biggish in the division above, but that's an entirely different thing

Quote :

You wouldnt understand the anger over HHP...

Yes I do - although I think that some of you are angry for all the wrong reasons, particularly the focus on capacity, which IMO is tilting at entirely the wrong windmill. Among many other things it seems to me that you are continually being led through the nose by your fantasies about the Premier League instead of dealing with the reality of the here and now. Apart from messing up your radar when dealing with situations like the one you currently find yourselves in, it makes it easy for leeches to lead you up the garden path by pressing your vanity buttons. Look how Brent regularly and coyly throws in the phrase "Premier League" whenever he's feeling the heat.

I realise I may be labouring the point, but the issue of the future revenue from the new stand and how that will affect you going forward for many years to come is a thousand times more important than the issue of what capacity may or may not be theoretically necessary in some highly unlikely scenario in the distant future. I describe the Premier League dream as unlikely not because I want to have a dig but because I'm convinced that the Premiership will be a closed shop one way or another, long before you get out from under the legacy of the succession of parasites that have fed on PAFC.

Quote :

We are a club who is actually in crisis because the 6,000 + crowds are not big enough...

That's entirely a function of the fact that Contacts Riddler had to submit a budget to the Football League in order to get your Golden Share after the CVA was agreed. The only way he could make it work was to budget for an average crowd of 8'000 as I recall, although I stand to be corrected. However this doesn't make you a big club in itself. When Oxford were in crisis and one of our rivals for promotion in the BSP, they had to achieve an average crowd of 6'000 to break even - and that was with a ticket price of £18 in 2006.

Quote :

and our lowest for decades.

Not true. It's your lowest average for a decade singular - not decades plural.

In the 12 years between 1991 and 2003 you only had 6 seasons where your average attendance was above 7'000 - and in one of those seasons it was barely above that at 7'120. In only one of those seasons - 1994 - was your average above 9'000. Since around 1968 your overall average attendance is somewhere between 8-9'000 and is something like 11- 12'000 for your 11 seasons or so in the 2nd tier. Admittedly that's a decent figure and one we could only dream of attaining consistently, but it is certainly not indicative of a truly big club IMO.

Quote :

Tell me, when did Exeter last have a 6,000+ crowd...

It depends if you're referring to a single game or a season average. Obviously the last 6'000 attendance for a single game was against you, unsurprisingly. Funnily enough your biggest home attendance by some considerable distance was in the return fixture - some three thousand greater than your next highest attendance. I guess not everybody is as indifferent to us as the Argyle-supporting members of ATD.

It's actually not all that unusual for us to get 6'000-plus crowds for individual League games - we managed it a number of times in League One. That was generally against the big clubs of course, but then the same is generally true for the 17'000 plus games against big clubs in your Championship seasons that many of you regularly draw attention to. The big away support and influx of plastics always artificially inflate home attendances when small and medium size clubs host big ones. That said we did achieve a 6'000-plus attendance against the giants of Gray's Athletic when we were both 1st and 2nd in the BSP. (On a side note Grays were one of the best footballing sides I've seen in League 2 and the Conference in the modern era  - but they are also a salutary lesson of the dangers of yearning for sugar daddies and so-called benefactors. Their catastrophic decline was largely due to the after-effects of unsustainable spending by a vain owner and the death of a benefactor and son of a former fan, who owned their ground and then unfortunately died, upon which the daughters who inherited his estate promptly told the club to get the hell off their development land).

The last time we achieved a 6'000 season was way back in the footballing cretaceous era of the mid-nineteen sixties - however in 2010 we were less than 200 short of that season average.  Incidentally the mid-nineteen sixties is more or less the last time you consistently achieved averages above 12-13'000. IMO it's no coincidence that this was right at the time that social, political and legal factors like the abolition of the maximum wage and the George Eastham case were eroding the NFL-like level-playing field that the Football League had tried to foster for the previous seventy years or so. That is why it is so futile for fans of the vast majority of clubs, including those of Argyle, to point to the attendances they achieved in the nineteen-fifties or whatnot and lament that they shoulda, woulda, coulda been a contender. It's a bit like the the Italians, Portuguese and Spanish arguing that they should be world powers once again. As it says in the Go-Between, "The past is another country; they do things differently there".

Quote :

We are a club that historically has walked this division...

No you haven't - you've walked it once. If we leave out the recent past, which is only fair, then in your other 4 seasons in the fourth tier you finished 12th, 12th, 13th, and 4th. That is hardly walking the division. Even if your claims were true, easily winning the bottom tier is not exactly an indication of a big club.

Quote :

We won it with a record points total of 102 points in 01-02, yep that is still a Football League record...

That's completely wrong I'm afraid. Reading and Sunderland have both beaten that figure with 106 and 105 points in 2005/06 and 1998/99. Under three-points-for-a-win Lincoln City would also have achieved 105 points in 1976. Swindon and Newcastle matched your achievement by reaching 102 points as well. What's more, Reading, Sunderland and Newcastle all posted those totals in a higher division. Therefore the other two teams who equalled or bettered your record points total while in the bottom tier are Swindon and Lincoln City. If you go down one single point to 101, then York City join the club, so if posting 100-plus points in the fourth division is the sine qua non of a big club then I'm a Dutchman who plays for Ajax.

Quote :

At third tier (Third Division South, Third Division, League One) we have been dominant. We have won it 3 times and finished runners up 6 times...

This is actually a mistake wrapped in an example of one of the many half-truths that are often twisted and then wedged in with a rhetorical crowbar to support the assertion that Plymouth Argyle is a truly big club.

You have actually won the third tier four times, not three - in 1930, 1952, 1959 and 2002. However on two of those occasions the third tier was actually one of two bottom divisions. It was also arguably the weaker of the two, given that the only powerhouse region of English football whose clubs consistently played there was London, which was not the force it is now anyway. The North and the Midlands were dominant in that era and most of the biggest Midlands sides at that level were usually  in the Third Division North - Wolves even played there in the first of their three seasons in the third tier.

Quote :

To save you checking, Exeter finished runners up in 1933, and it was their highest ever league finish - to this day! I can only assume the rest of the country was too busy feeling the effects of the Wall Street crash and worrying about the rise of far right nationalism in Germany to notice...

Why are you comparing yourselves to us? I thought you were trying to prove that you are a big club - wouldn't it be more productive to give examples that compare your record favourably to that of far bigger clubs? While it's true that among City fans you can also find examples of the particular brand of self-delusion concerning the true size of their clubs that seems to be a curious feature of South-West football fans, I don't think you could put Sturtz, Lord Tisdale and I in that category. I think we all recognise that we're a small, historically unsuccessful club and can accept that fact and even embrace it. I don't personally believe that crowing about this or that league position is the essence of what it means to be a football fan anyway. On the contrary, IMO the belief that it is makes too many fans wail and stamp their feet like some kind of superannuated Veruca Salt. All they seem to care about is getting a sugar daddy of their own to buy them unearned success like the big kid's sugar daddy up the road, regardless of how filthy dirty that sugar daddy's money might be, or whether there might be a corrosive effect on their clubs future and what it should stand for.

Quote :

We are a club that has finished within touching distance of the playoffs to the Premier League.

And this is yet another example of the way in which some of us often tell ourselves what we want to hear.

Yes, it's true that in the so-called "Holloway season"  you finished six points off the playoffs, but the other important half of the story is that you finished 10th, four places outside the playoffs and more or less solidly mid-table. Two points fewer and you would have been in the bottom-half. If you are going to argue that season is proof of your big club status, then you would have to accept that Swindon Town, Cambridge United, Tranmere Rovers, Colchester United, Grimsby Town, Peterborough and Stockport County are all big clubs as well. Each of those clubs have finished at least tenth in the second tier since the formation of the Premier League and all bar Colchester and Peterborough have finished higher. As you probably know Cambridge and Tranmere Rovers have actually reached the play-offs (Tranmere multiple times) and Swindon actually won them to reach the Premier League. If any of those seven are genuinely big clubs then not only am I a Dutchman who plays for Ajax, but I've scored the winning goal for Holland in the World Cup Final to boot.

Quote :

We have traditionally sat comfortably in the second tier...

It depends on what you mean by "comfortably". For nearly half of your forty seasons in the second tier you finished in 18th place or below - in other words closer to the contemporary relegation positions than mid-table. Of course most of those second-tier seasons were played before 1970.

As I've already mentioned, the cretaceous era of the nineteen thirties, fifties and sixties is of little use when evaluating the modern status of most football clubs for the reasons I alluded to earlier. If you insist on going that far back, then you presumably believe that Wolverhampton Wanderers should still consider themselves to be one of the biggest teams in the world as they were in the era of Billy Wright. The circumstances of the period before the abolition of the maximum wage, the George Eastman decision, the much more recent Bosman case and the big money era of the Premier League make the contemporary era so vastly different from what went before that the historic record of clubs is often irrelevant for contemporary purposes. Unfortunately as soon as money entered the equation and after players became able to decide where they wanted to play, instead of being forced to go anywhere the selling club told them to, a backwater like the South-West fell through the trapdoor of serious disadvantage.

Believe it or not, 1966 is actually closer to the First World War and 1978 closer to the Second than to the present day. Since the latter year you have played in the 2nd tier for twelve seasons out of thirty-five, or almost exactly one in three, of which half yielded a finish as close to relegation as mid-table. If you go back to 1970 the story is the same - fourteen seasons played in the second tier out of forty-three, of which you finished as close to the relegation places as mid-table half of the time. Since the formation of the Premier League, it's been no different - you have spent five seasons in the second tier, finishing seventeenth or below in three of them. Stockport, Tranmere, Grimsby and Swindon have played more times in the second tier since the Premier League was formed than yourselves. In fact Tranmere and Grimsby have played there twice as much and the latter have spent more seasons in the 2nd tier full stop. Of course Grimsby have also played in the top flight, along with the likes of Northampton, Carlisle and Oxford. Do you seriously believe that any of these clubs , or most of the others I have mentioned, would be generally thought of as big clubs? This is the logical conclusion of your rationale for arguing that Argyle should be described in that way. Unfortunately the record overwhelmingly shows that you are naturally a top of the third-tier side that spends occasional periods in the second, with a fanbase that is somewhere around 8-9'000, barring exceptionally good or bad periods. While that is something we can only dream about, it is not the record of a truly big club.

Quote :

Poor old Exeter can't even achieve what Yeovil has and be there for a season...

Or indeed Hereford in a different era. I should point out that  Yeovil's achievement was variously described as, "once in a lifetime", "unbelievable", "a fairy story" and so on, so while I envy their achievement, I don't use them as a stick to beat ECFC with, although some of our moaners seem to enjoy doing so.

Of course we actually finished two places and one point outside the playoffs for the Championship very recently. Interestingly, despite the fact that this is far closer to the Championship playoffs than you were to the Premiership playoffs in your mythical "Holloway season" I'm not aware of any strand of ECFC opinion that regards that season as "the one where we nearly made the Championship". All the fans I know seem to appreciate that if if second is nowhere then eighth is not worth talking about and tenth is a total irrelevance. After all tenth is where we finished last year and if any City fan describes that as "within touching distance of the playoffs" as if that is some great achievement I'd be surprised.

We finished that high despite the death of one of our most important players during the season - a fact which obviously had serious effects on the mentality of the squad and especially on the younger players, quite apart from the practical effect it had on the team, particularly the importance of Stanno to the way we played away from home at that time. We also suffered a mass flu epidemic over Christmas, which meant for example, that at Home Park that year the manager was ill in bed and we couldn't find eleven fully fit players - a few, like Matt Taylor, would have been considered too ill to even be named in the squad under normal circumstances. Counterfactual history is always a bit of a pointless parlour game (something many of you should take on board) but I don't think it's outlandish to suggest that we might possibly have emulated Yeovil's achievements without the unusual setbacks of that year - and that was in what looks to have been a much tougher league on paper, when you consider that we were competing for promotion with the likes of a moneybags Brighton, Southampton and a strong Huddersfield side.

Quote :

(Exeter City are happy) just to visit the big clubs and wave a hand graciously...'It's just nice to be here' grinning from ear to ear, that sort of thing.

Guilty as charged. I absolutely get a buzz out of visiting the big clubs like Leeds - why wouldn't I?

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In the FA Cup we have got to the semi finals, and nearly did again in 08 - but despite belting performances, lost on both occasions. Exeter are usually happy to make it to the third round...'might we get Manchester United #exciting', that sort of thing.

And we've reached the quarter-finals twice. Admittedly the same caveat applies that I used to demonstrate why a lot of your evidence for Argyle being a big club is flawed - i.e one of our appearances took place when dinosaurs ruled the earth in football terms.

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When Exeter develop a history to replace those 100+ years of mediocrity, come let us know  

It could be some time. On the other hand I would argue that your history simply demonstrates a slightly more elevated brand of relative mediocrity, rather than that of a sleeping giant. At the end of the day we are both located in entirely the wrong part of the country for a successful football team. It is no coincidence that the clubs in Bristol, the region's only genuinely big city IMO, also have a relatively indifferent history.

The supporters of Brent's Blunder have known all along that it wasn't good enough and would terminally restrict the club. The deal is almost certainly that they keep their places in the limelight[if that's how it can be described] while the man tries to make his money and who knows, they may even end up running the village show when he slides away.