Holloway

Damon.Lenszner wrote:

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Exactly.

And it was Iddlesleigh who upped and cleared out sharpish when the cricket club land purchase was proposed. He's been an extremely divisive and malignantly manipulative influence on the club for a very, very long time.

You only have to look at his almost complete media silence, his cowardly use of internet multis, him sitting next to Newell in the directors' box, his support for HHP, spineless acceptance of Webb as club President, the current brand mis-management, a long series of PR disasters, his "feck off and support Man Utd" comments...

Never mind the money. Where is the vision and integrity the club needs?

I suspect SFDs dislike of Peter Jones has clouded his judgement. Jones, Foot and Warren offered their resignations when Stapleton, Dennerley and Gill wanted to buy the cricket ground and rent it to PAFC. Argyle were to be the tenants, Stapleton, Dennerley and Gill, the landlords.
This was the first indication that personal gain was the goal.
Warren later withdrew his threat and stayed on (the)board for a while.
Jones and Foot were correct and you could argue, honourable, in their decision.
Peter Jones hasn't covered himself in glory of late but you are wrong to criticise him in this instant.

Absolute nonsense. The plan was for the football club to by the cricket ground. Jones v1 was opposed to it. Stapleton Dennerley (rip) and Gill bought it and Jones and Foot resigned.

Holloway leaving had everything to do with his salary being tripled by Mandaric.


He was told quite clearly at interview what the business model was and how we would operate on spending out what came in. He understood that and agreed to it.

Complete Bollox Damon

Argyle lay 4th in the league and Holloway wanted investment, to push for the premier league, That's the closest the club has and ever will get to it. The board bottled it and instead told him they were going to dismantle his team, he then saw the money problems on the horizon and Leicester were looking for a manager so he went.

The long and short of it is the club just had to back him and he would have got us into the premier that season, but they bottled it ... GUTLESS !!!

Sorry Dane, dont remember seeing you at Ollies interview. What I have stated is fact. Now Ollie may have wanted to rewrite the script but he knew exactly what he was coming into.

So the club didn't dismantle his team - he didn't ask you for further investment to get to the premier league

all it would have took, and in mine and 1000's of other's opinion, the board at the time, bottled it

threw away the best chance the club ever had, Look what direction it took instead. Jokers !!!!

Sorry Damon I know you were part of the board for a time, but during that great spell on the pitch for the club, the team progressed tremendously - but the club was always and always will be a small time outfit !!! Run by small time amateurs

Great time on the pitch and financially sound. Thats how it was. Sorry it wasnt good enough for you Dane, but I did the best I could.

As a collective Damon, not you specifically !!!!

Just made some bad decisions in the end.

Dane. wrote:

So the club didn't dismantle his team - he didn't ask you for further investment to get to the premier league

all it would have took, and in mine and 1000's of other's opinion, the board at the time, bottled it

threw away the best chance the club ever had, Look what direction it took instead. Jokers !!!!

Sorry Damon I know you were part of the board for a time, but during that great spell on the pitch for the club, the team progressed tremendously - but the club was always and always will be a small time outfit !!! Run by small time amateurs

Isn't hindsight a wonderful gift to have......Dane or Damon....who to believe.....well Damon was nearer the action.....Dane certainly wasn't....and what others say on here... he doesn't know too much about football.....not my words but others.....but what do you believe on an internet sight anyrate.

Doesn't matter who was close to what, Facts are Facts

I didn't see damon trying to hard to disprove any of the above did you ??

One mans facts are another mans lies.

More chance of finding out if Diana was in a car crash or was murdered.....then finding out any true facts about Argyle in the last 10yrs.

True Zyph - the only things I can say for sure are those things that occurred between Feb 05 and Aug 07.

You chose a good time to get out

Damon.Lenszner wrote:

True Zyph - the only things I can say for sure are those things that occurred between Feb 05 and Aug 07.

Which is why you're mistaken with the cricket ground ownership. If, as you say, three of the directors wanted PAFC to buy the cricket land then what was stopping them. In the event of a split vote, the chairman's vote counts double. Therefore a 3/3 split becomes 4/3. They could have voted it through with no problem. The truth is it never happened. And after all, who ended up buying the land? Stapleton, Dennerley and Gill.
Even now after all that's happened, you still refuse to acknowledge the greed of some of that old board.

If it was as you said then why after buying the land did they not rent it to Argyle as you said they set out to do?

Because the deal took a long time to be finalised. It took nearly three years to eject the various cricket clubs from the ground by which time priorities had changed.

So the priorities were not being greedy three years later? All I can say for sure is that at no time during my 2.5 years was personal gain ever discussed in the Board room.

Damon do you think people came down with the last shower, people remember !!!!!

In fairness to you and Tony Wrathall, you were both wet behind the ears. This was all new to you both. I'd sooner not go into finer details but there were ways and means in which to profit personally and make it seem perfectly reasonable.

It does come to the point where Damon's inside information (albeit conceivably biased - how can we tell) is being challenged by someone else who appears to have inside information but has a pseudonym. I've never been one to suggest using a real name but in this instance .....

However, if Damon knows Rollo Tomasi & he's happy to continue then that's up to him.

You're right Knecht. I find it frustrating when certain posters wish to paint a glorious picture of better times when the reality was a bit different. I'll bow out now.

knecht wrote:

It does come to the point where Damon's inside information (albeit conceivably biased - how can we tell) is being challenged by someone else who appears to have inside information but has a pseudonym. I've never been one to suggest using a real name but in this instance .....

However, if Damon knows Rollo Tomasi & he's happy to continue then that's up to him.

PA Confidential?

I find it insulting that an ex director is posting on here and trying to dress the past up as something it wasn't.

Does he think the peasants are stupid ?

I'm sure Damon is correct when he says Holloway knew the business model operated within the club when he came on board. It would be nonsensical if he didn't.

I think it's also fair to say that the board were taken by surprise by the success Holloway enjoyed both on and off the pitch. He took what Pulis had achieved and built on it to make us one of the best teams in the Championship - a team that was respected and feared by other clubs. Holloway was also very media savvy and the publicity enjoyed by the club, nationally not just locally, had Stapleton and Co starstruck, and the seed was planted then that perhaps something could be gained from the exposure the club was enjoying.

It couldn't last of course, the capital wasn't there to move the club to the next level. I don't know if was widely known at the time, but Holloway had talked to Clint Dempsey who was available and was interested in coming here. But of course, there was never any chance within the business model that the club operated - organic growth if I remember rightly.

So the model needed to be changed, and this was what the 'consortium' at that time wanted to do. They met with Holloway, outlined their plans, reassured him that he was the manager they wanted, and to coin a phrase, he was as happy as a badger etc etc.

We all know what happened next.

The frustrating thing was that the revised model wasn't that far different from the existing one. It wasn't about throwing money at the club it was still about growth but starting from a much healthier financial base, with significant capital available from genuine lifelong Argyle fans, not ex bankers looking to make a fast buck.

I have not the slightest doubt that, had that happened, Holloway would have taken this club to the Premier League.

With the current set up this club will never, ever be anywhere near such success again.

Dane. wrote:

I find it insulting that an ex director is posting on here and trying to dress the past up as something it wasn't.

Does he think the peasants are stupid ?

Some are. Do you have inside information? I certainly don't.

I often find what Damon has to say well worth reading. Like every one of us it will be coloured by whatever experience we've had & what 'knowledge' we think we have. And that's the trouble - so many people think they 'know' things whereas all they 'know' is surmise and prejudice. I prefer to read Damon's posts & add them to all that I read and then make judgements.

If Rollo thought I was trying to out him, my apologies. It certainly wasn't what I was intending. I just thought that the debate should be had on equal terms. Now it will bug me trying to guess who he might be but that's my problem & not his   .

(As an aside .... when Rollo Tomasi first signed up when I was in the mod-room, my hackles went up because of the similarity of his name to one of our most ...... errr.... 'interesting' frequent posters. Clearly I was wrong!)

No, not all the peasants are stupid, some of those peasants never thought that team was good enough to get us promoted to start with. They did very well, punching above their weight. Some fans are always banging on about how Argyle were 4th. For how long? After beating Charlton away to go 4th, Argyle then proceeded to lose away at Preston, lost at home to Sheffield Wed. drew away at Colchester before beating Norwich at home to go back up to 7th. The more important statistic was by the Norwich game the attendances were down on the previous season by around 1000 on the previous season. Hardly the reaction by a fan base who thought they were watching potential promotion candidates. Not much help in paying the wage bill either. Or competing with the riches of the parachute clubs.

Dane claims the board "bottled it", but doesn't tell us just where the board was going to get this additional investment from? Argyle's wage bill was already beginning to spiral upwards and get out of control.

Let's just imagine the board had managed to push the boat out and borrow more money for more players from somewhere and didn't manage to get promoted. Argyle would have gone into administration much earlier than we did IMO.

Stating "Ollie would have got us promoted"  is complete and absolute guesswork. That's no different to saying if JB had opened the purse strings in January we would get promoted this year. Ollie didn't get Leicester promoted did he, and they had a bloody sight more money than we did.

There's an awful lot of wishful thinking goes on, on these websites at times.

I do not think we were good enough for promotion Richard but I am quite convinced that we were not far from it.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but at that time I wanted Jones to bring in his investors. Looking back now and judging Jones by his more recent dealings, I really cannot blame Stapes and Co. for telling him where to poke it. 

Did Stapes actively seek financial assistance? Who knows, but putting all the political myths to one side, I really do believe that we missed our greatest ever opportunity for reaching the pinnacle of football.

Wolves were relegated from the Championship recently with Kevin Doyle on the books earning £40,000 a week. There were other high earning players. They did have a Premier League set-up but it's not all about throwing money at a club and at players. Leeds are still a second tier club, Cardiff with their flashy new stadium and Premier League status look doomed to slip into the Championship again very soon, Brighton will need promotion and sustained top flight football or they'll be in trouble within a few years, Bolton are over £160m in debt, Portsmouth?