Holloway

hairy j wrote:

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?

And your opinion on 'Argyle' slotted into the beforehand mentioned..?

We were good enough to be in with a shout at the end, well until players were sold that is. What clubs normally do when in with a shout is get in a couple of excellent loans for the run in. Hull went up with no huge wealth.
Sturrock diid nothing of the sort, probably at the behest of the board, and in fact even upset the in form Seip  and hence the whole balance of the changing room by playing that Russel loan character instead. Seip had been putting off a hugely important operation in order to help the push.
Sturrock also changed Halmosi's role to a more workmanlike midfield role, totally nulified the advantage the player gave us. Poor management, that was not helped by Halmosi's bad injury. The only decent player we got in was the experienced and handy Gary Teale....nowhere near enough to compensate for the losses.
Clubs like Argyle cannot compete in season long expenditure, but they can build a base as Holloway did, and then throw a million at it in the run in. Several clubs who have been promoted on no huge wealth have done it. There was no effort to do that whatsoever. The club had already returned to the old Sturrock/Stapleton easy does it routine after the Holloway shock. That sort of approach was so not what was required at the time.

That's because sturrock was the cheap option.

hairy j wrote:

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?

I think that your opinion conflicts with the facts you have provided. You mention 6 clubs and all but one of those clubs have had recent spells in the Premier showing that football is very much about throwing money at the club and players. 

Not for a minute am I advocating that formula, but all of those clubs will be in existence in ten years time because as someone else has said on one of these threads, football is indirectly bailed out by tax payers, wrongly in my opinion. We are witnessing it being played out at Home Park at the moment, the only difference is that we never had a bite at the cherry and that Brent will be picking up the rich pickings from the leftovers.

PlymptonPilgrim wrote:

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.

Wow.

As a piece of tactical ineptitude with disastrous consequences tapping up the current manager with a view to destabilising the current board is hard to beat. Just who the feck did they think they were?

There's yet another wedge (along with the cricket club business, Deep Throat and feck-off-and-support-Man-Utd) deliberately driven into the heart of the club with the sole intent of causing, at best, disharmony and, at worst, meltdown. And, boy!, how it succeeded!

I have to say I'm rather surprised that nobody else has picked up on this but there it is in PP's own words. How else can you interpret it?

Thanks a feckin bunch, lads.

Apart from his own personal gain to the tune, apparently, of half a bar one has to wonder has Jones ever done anything good for the club - and I mean ever.

Damon.Lenszner wrote:

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.

Wow, So you're saying that was it, ad finitum, no flexibility, no change in plans as required, no possibilities for the manager to progress the team and club!

Then it seems that Ollie did outstay his remit and T & C's, can you blame him for having had enough of Stapes false promises.

That is a sad indictment of the club and board, as bad as the the current board that you also criticise for the same or similar.

The team was progressing. But the business model was that what came in went out. Looking at what happened later was that so wrong?

GOB wrote:

hairy j wrote:

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?

I think that your opinion conflicts with the facts you have provided. You mention 6 clubs and all but one of those clubs have had recent spells in the Premier showing that football is very much about throwing money at the club and players. 

Not for a minute am I advocating that formula, but all of those clubs will be in existence in ten years time because as someone else has said on one of these threads, football is indirectly bailed out by tax payers, wrongly in my opinion. We are witnessing it being played out at Home Park at the moment, the only difference is that we never had a bite at the cherry and that Brent will be picking up the rich pickings from the leftovers.

Not really. I picked teams that aren't Premier League regulars. Portsmouth weren't there that long, Wolves yo-yo, Brighton aren't there, Cardiff will go down, Bolton were regulars but inevitably went down with what are now enormous debts, Leeds are a basket case now although have a history.
You can add Darlington, Luton and also Swansea when they eventually return to the Championship, QPR as soon as their board run out of cash or decide to leave. Norwich can't survive in the top flight and they're regarded as a well run club with good local support. Hull will struggle until they go down. Sunderland have and will yo-yo.
What I'm trying to say is, there's very few clubs in the World that can be sustainable and highly successful. There aren't many clubs who've been top flight for twenty years.

Someone will bang on about Hull but they'll go down too eventually.

If I remember rightly Coventry City were one of the clubs who had been in the 1st / premier division for the longest uninterrupted spell, along with Everton ( might be wrong ) and look at the state they are now in.

So don't bother trying then. You'll end up a financial basket case.... Don't want to be like that Portsmouth winning a major trophy after all... Hang one aren't we a financial basket case despite never achieving or even trying to achieve anything.

Why are so many people are proud of the 15th largest city being crap at football? Such a typical plymouth attitude wallow in being shit and laughing at anyone that try's but fails to be anything other. Football was always supposed to be about those Roy of the rovers moments when I grew up, the idea that it might one day happen to your club. Instead we get told to be grateful we have a club and we don't want any plaastics

I'm not proud of it, I see football as, primarily, a sport. Financial Fair Play is so flawed and impossible as football seems less and less of a sport. There's players at the top end of the Premier League in the reserves that have been bought for millions that will never play. Scott Sinclair? There's teams on the continent that seem to be in the pockets of bigger clubs - feeder clubs almost - Vitesse Arnham and Chelsea.
It's the disparity in wages that's ruined the game - it's only the media who try and build the myth of an open/competitive sport. This season, we're told it's an open Premier League and a competitive title race - it isn't. The top four look very similar to previous years and the bottom is predictable.
I'd like to see us higher in the football pyramid but we'll never go to the very top - you can't do that without at least £1bn.

I remember being shocked when Cottee went to Everton for £2.2m back in the 80s; Rooney earns that in less than two months.

It's pie in the sky.

I can handle the fact that Argyle isn't a top ten prem. team, what I find hard to accept is the clubs board and owner seem happy to muddle along in the lower leagues. Everything that I do I try and do to the best of my ability, if you apply that to Argyle then it stands to reason that because of the size of the city and our support we should be on average a higher league one, mid table CCC team. The apologies and excuses about why board after board fail to achive this is hard to swallow. "at least we have a club to support" has a lot to answer for.

Even to become a 2nd/3rd tier yoyo club isn't easy these days. Unless you have a wealthy owner with ambition and vision to inspire the latent fanbase. Only clubs with solid top flight histories enjoy cemented fanbases, like Norwich and Southampton. Add to them many others like Wolves, Leeds, Forest, Derby,WBA, Leicester and Stoke. Even little old Ipswich hang onto a decent fanbase after a long time out of the top flight because they've been there and there's belief in the club.
Argyle 'could' be on a par with these clubs support wise when struggling too but it will now take money, vision and several seasons in the PL before that can happen.
Old Porkie and his chums are happy fighting to be no 1 in Devon with a nice little stadium. They blame stay away plastics. Every big catchment area club is the same, until it makes the top flight breakthrough.

stay away plastics, glory hunters. makes i laugh.

how can i possibly be a glory hunter, supporting a team that has never won anything!   

Tringreen wrote:

Even to become a 2nd/3rd tier yoyo club isn't easy these days. Unless you have a wealthy owner with ambition and vision to inspire the latent fanbase. Only clubs with solid top flight histories enjoy cemented fanbases, like Norwich and Southampton. Add to them many others like Wolves, Leeds, Forest, Derby,WBA, Leicester and Stoke. Even little old Ipswich hang onto a decent fanbase after a long time out of the top flight because they've been there and there's belief in the club.
Argyle 'could' be on a par with these clubs support wise when struggling too but it will now take money, vision and several seasons in the PL before that can happen.
Old Porkie and his chums are happy fighting to be no 1 in Devon with a nice little stadium. They blame stay away plastics. Every big catchment area club is the same, until it makes the top flight breakthrough.

Getting there in the first place in the modern era is a lot, lot, lot harder than it was back in the 70s and 80s. At least you concede that Tring.
Where are we going to get a wealthy owner with ambition (ambition is actually being prepared to plough most of their fortune into a 'hobby')? Chris Dawson is about the only realistic candidate and he isn't interested in football. Dan 666 was actually the 'type' but the fans hated him.
Being an Argyle fan is really shite sometimes - thanks Dad!

We might have got one if the Stapes board hadn't want to keep their fingers in the pie and had actively promoted the club on return to the 2nd tier.
Even the consortium would have been better than nothing. At least we might have had a shot at it before imploding.

He who dares, wins occasionally. Cardiff were ridiculed for being in debt but still splashing out on players. At least they've had their day in the sunshine. We went tits up without even having a sniff.
Swansea seem to have done ok. They were where we are now 10 years ago. Hull and Reading have their money men admittedly but I'm still convinced we have exactly the same potential. Sadly with brent and his jamboys efforts, we are likely to become a boxed in , village sideshow for decades to come. Even sadder, is the fact that the same 5 or 6k will still enjoy the ride. Some more than others. 

The consortium was every bit as responsible for Holloway leaving as Stapleton and Co were. This is what PP said about it on this thread "They met with Holloway, outlined their plans, reassured him that he was the manager they wanted" despite not having the club they wanted.

Given what we now know do you still, seriously, have any faith whatsoever in what you once believed the consortium might have done?

After all their bid was never as generous as was painted, had so many strings attached it stood no chance of success at all (hence the attempt to turn Holloway's head) which they knew full well and their bid was only made when it was in an attempt to stop the freehold transfer because after it their money pot was too small. On top of all that now we're aware of the growing collection of wedges that Peter Jones has driven into and through the fabric of the club before that time, during it and since...

And as PP says himself "the revised model wasn't that far different from the existing one". Two sides of the same coin and all the furore fuelled by mutual personality clashes and personal resentment.

I never had any faith in their proposal and with the benefit of hindsight it doesn't look like I was far wrong.

When something looks too good to be true it usually is. A magnificent, free grandstand anybody?

I genuinely wouldn't want to be a Cardiff City fan. As soon as Tan leaves - and he will - they're truly fecked. Swansea'll be relegated too eventually. Teams like that, unless they relentlessly improve, eventually go down. Teams like that cannot keep improving. There is a glass ceiling in the Premier League and the teams above that glass ceilng are so powerful (in terms of attracting players and paying astronomical wages) that other teams below will never compete. Everton are a huge club but they'll never win the Premier League. What hope does anyone outside of that have?
There are about 40 sides like us in England - the top flight has room for 20. At least 10 of those have cemented themselves. Living in reality, without the bluster of rhetoric, there's a minute chance we'll ever get there in the next twenty years. That's only if we don't self sustain and throw two/three hundred million at the team or if the whole bottom falls out of foitball entirely - that's unlikely to happen.
Let's hope Tring gets on the phone to that Janner Saudi Arabian Shake Ya Pasty and convinces him to pour his oil money into the club.

One day, just one day, we'll be able to afford to buy players like this!

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hairy j wrote:

I genuinely wouldn't want to be a Cardiff City fan. As soon as Tan leaves - and he will - they're truly fecked. Swansea'll be relegated too eventually. Teams like that, unless they relentlessly improve, eventually go down.

Well yeah, that's pretty much what happens generally in football ain't it?

If you listen to popular opinion, we came very very close to going to the wall. And for what? Jackshit.

Cardiff may well one day be as much "truly fcuked" as we actually were. Or they may not.

Either way, as a fan, surely football is in essence about what you yourself experience over a lifetime of watching your team. Like him or loathe him, Tan has given those Cardiff fans something they'll never forget.

Tringreen wrote:

We might have got one if the Stapes board hadn't want to keep their fingers in the pie and had actively promoted the club on return to the 2nd tier.
Even the consortium would have been better than nothing. At least we might have had a shot at it before imploding.

He who dares, wins occasionally. Cardiff were ridiculed for being in debt but still splashing out on players. At least they've had their day in the sunshine. We went tits up without even having a sniff.
Swansea seem to have done ok. They were where we are now 10 years ago. Hull and Reading have their money men admittedly but I'm still convinced we have exactly the same potential. Sadly with brent and his jamboys efforts, we are likely to become a boxed in , village sideshow for decades to come. Even sadder, is the fact that the same 5 or 6k will still enjoy the ride. Some more than others. 

4 minutes 45 seconds on and Tring wins...if that team could have gotten us up...?

Dick Trickle wrote:

Tringreen wrote:

We might have got one if the Stapes board hadn't want to keep their fingers in the pie and had actively promoted the club on return to the 2nd tier.
Even the consortium would have been better than nothing. At least we might have had a shot at it before imploding.

He who dares, wins occasionally. Cardiff were ridiculed for being in debt but still splashing out on players. At least they've had their day in the sunshine. We went tits up without even having a sniff.
Swansea seem to have done ok. They were where we are now 10 years ago. Hull and Reading have their money men admittedly but I'm still convinced we have exactly the same potential. Sadly with brent and his jamboys efforts, we are likely to become a boxed in , village sideshow for decades to come. Even sadder, is the fact that the same 5 or 6k will still enjoy the ride. Some more than others. 

4 minutes 45 seconds on and Tring wins...if that team could have gotten us up...?

Indeed.That's all I've ever said.............. repeatedly, for at least a decade. Argyle in the 2nd tier needs investment and vision to have any chance of kicking on. The chairman and board were outclassed in both areas and got greedy.They were blindly supported by the self promoting, flat earth brigade controlling pasoti and all warning voices had to be silenced.
Nothing much has changed.

'I'll never heard bad words against those men and their lovely families'    Sickening and village   

Tringreen wrote:

Dick Trickle wrote:

Tringreen wrote:

We might have got one if the Stapes board hadn't want to keep their fingers in the pie and had actively promoted the club on return to the 2nd tier.
Even the consortium would have been better than nothing. At least we might have had a shot at it before imploding.

He who dares, wins occasionally. Cardiff were ridiculed for being in debt but still splashing out on players. At least they've had their day in the sunshine. We went tits up without even having a sniff.
Swansea seem to have done ok. They were where we are now 10 years ago. Hull and Reading have their money men admittedly but I'm still convinced we have exactly the same potential. Sadly with brent and his jamboys efforts, we are likely to become a boxed in , village sideshow for decades to come. Even sadder, is the fact that the same 5 or 6k will still enjoy the ride. Some more than others. 

4 minutes 45 seconds on and Tring wins...if that team could have gotten us up...?

[flash(425,350)]about:blank[/flash]

Indeed.That's all I've ever said.............. repeatedly, for at least a decade. Argyle in the 2nd tier needs investment and vision to have any chance of kicking on. The chairman and board were outclassed in both areas and got greedy.They were blindly supported by the self promoting, flat earth brigade controlling pasoti and all warning voices had to be silenced.
Nothing much has changed.

'I'll never heard bad words against those men and their lovely families'    Sickening and village   

"Everyone in football knew how good that team was."   

It may not have worked, but if the same people who dampened down dissenters had actively campaigned for real investment in that team, I reckon a totally different path would have been mapped in our recent history.

Sickening and Village, indeed.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

The consortium was every bit as responsible for Holloway leaving as Stapleton and Co were. This is what PP said about it on this thread "They met with Holloway, outlined their plans, reassured him that he was the manager they wanted" despite not having the club they wanted.

Given what we now know do you still, seriously, have any faith whatsoever in what you once believed the consortium might have done?

After all their bid was never as generous as was painted, had so many strings attached it stood no chance of success at all (hence the attempt to turn Holloway's head) which they knew full well and their bid was only made when it was in an attempt to stop the freehold transfer because after it their money pot was too small. On top of all that now we're aware of the growing collection of wedges that Peter Jones has driven into and through the fabric of the club before that time, during it and since...

And as PP says himself "the revised model wasn't that far different from the existing one". Two sides of the same coin and all the furore fuelled by mutual personality clashes and personal resentment.

I never had any faith in their proposal and with the benefit of hindsight it doesn't look like I was far wrong.

When something looks too good to be true it usually is. A magnificent, free grandstand anybody?

Fair point SFD and with hindsight I think that even Tring would have to acknowledge that we misjudged that one, but only with regards to the character assessment of Jones who in my opinion has proved himself to be completely inadequate to hold such a position both financially and professionally and, his business negotiating skills appear at best to be less than amateur.

However, the basic principle of the Club requiring investment for improvement remains, it was simply the wrong consortium with one or two of the wrong people, but it was only one or two.

I remember meeting Kev Ball on occasion and we shared a great many pints together to the point where just leaving the pub became a major staggering issue. His vision for a successful PAFC was exciting and sensible and he had the contacts to make it happen. I know you guys were arch enemies but his commitment for a successful Club couldn’t be denied.
Without WW3 breaking out on here it would be interesting to hear his version of events. I know he was not a well chappy so I hope he is fit and up and running again. He popped up on the old Argyle Talk site prior to Newell and Ponty gaining access and closing it, it would be good to hear from him again. Anyone know what he is up to these days?