How much dosh do you think would save us from relegation

The quick answer to your Brent £1m question is no it would not. Ipswich were successful when? Not so much recently but their history has had it. Southampton nearly went bust but again their history from years ago included success. Reading are not far from London. Cardiff nearly went bust. I will grant you Blackpool and Hull both of whom went up via a playoff rather than directly if I recall. That though is where some luck comes in with having the right people at the right time. You have to admit that some squads out perform themselves or rather their expectation. Why is that? In my view because they all happen to gel and perform together despite themselves. We had 16000 when in the Championship which was going down gradually. However that figure is hardly the same as a Southampton with their history. In a lot of the areas teams have had success over years even if some have had it a while ago. The difference is they have retained a lot of their support base which is something Argyle have not done. Look at the crowds at Southampton in league one compared to our crowds in the Championship. Whether we like it or not it is unlikely we would have the old average 25000 anytime soon even with success. Not only would we like a multi millionaire to come along with a wedge to spare but one who doesn't care about the numbers coming through the gates either to re-coup some of it. Why would they is the simple question which is why we are where we are with the owner we have who won't do what a lot would like.

I actually don't think we're too far apart here,i agree with you that the reason why our gates have not retained their former levels is the lack of success in comparison to the aforementioned clubs.But you still don't really answer the question as to why those clubs attained their success in the first place,other than attribute it to luck and timing,which i would admit can be helpful factors but not crucial ones IMHO. Far more important was that those clubs retained their best players at key times and built around them.You mentioned in one of your earlier posts that we've always been a selling club,which is perfectly true.But why should that have been,even when our gates were much higher than than just about all of those clubs?

In answer to your last question I don't know why but can only guess that none of our former boards, and it does go back years, have had the interest to further the dream. That really is about it. Some of the teams you quoted have not been successful for a long time except recently. Take Norwich. They had a period of success years ago and retained their fanbase without too much in the way of opposition locally. Ipswich can't boast the same fanbase now as their gates have gone down. Why does one club keep their fans and another not. That is the million dollar question. I can only guess that this part of the world hasn't had the same rivallry as say Norfolk/Suffolk or Southampton/Portsmouth. All we could boast for years was Exeter or Torquay and did not spend too many seasons in the same league as them to create the same interest. Lets face it, the reasons for this or that are opinion mostly based on our preconceptions of history and area. I believe Plymouth has the club it deserves mostly and this is due to the appathy of the surrounding population over the last 25 years. Others think it is all down to successive Boards. I suspect the truth if it was delved into formally would be somewhere in the middle.

Sensiblegreeny wrote:

In answer to your last question I don't know why but can only guess that none of our former boards, and it does go back years, have had the interest to further the dream. That really is about it. Some of the teams you quoted have not been successful for a long time except recently. Take Norwich. They had a period of success years ago and retained their fanbase without too much in the way of opposition locally. Ipswich can't boast the same fanbase now as their gates have gone down. Why does one club keep their fans and another not. That is the million dollar question. I can only guess that this part of the world hasn't had the same rivallry as say Norfolk/Suffolk or Southampton/Portsmouth. All we could boast for years was Exeter or Torquay and did not spend too many seasons in the same league as them to create the same interest. Lets face it, the reasons for this or that are opinion mostly based on our preconceptions of history and area. I believe Plymouth has the club it deserves mostly and this is due to the appathy of the surrounding population over the last 25 years. Others think it is all down to successive Boards. I suspect the truth if it was delved into formally would be somewhere in the middle.

They've all been more successful than us though by and large and retained a bigger fanbase accordingly.Put it this way if,for example, Southampton over the past x number of years had achieved the same results and status as Argyle,do you honestly think that their gates would have been any better? That certainly wasn't the case with Cardiff,Hull and Bristol City,cities of similar size and whose relatively recent history has been quite similar to Argyle's-their gates plummeted to even lower levels than ours when they were in the doldrums.Can't see that Plymouth deserves a decent team any less than those cities.Surely that apathy that you speak of,and which i fully agree exists in large dollops,has been engendered by the lack of success,rather than any generic reason?

I didn't mean deserves in the sense of Plymouth being a less worthy City. I meant that the population as a whole does not deserve a premiership club given it's overwhelming lack of support from them generally. There are probably 5000 locals who care and another 5000 who would care if it meant a bit of glory. The rest come from the surrounding area rather than the City itself and the Cornish have no professional clubs of their own.

As I said I don't know why some clubs hang onto their support base despite not having much success for a long time and others quickly lose theirs as soon as the going gets a bit tough. If I knew the answer then I could bottle it and sell it to other Cities whose Clubs have under achieved Worldwide.

The clubs that hold onto their support base in tough times are the traditionally big clubs who have spent most of their history in the top flight, plus clubs that have had extended spells in the top flight in modern times ie 60's onwards. The likes of Norwich and Ipswich for instance and they both had European success too. That is when fanbases are cemented because the region believes in the club. Southampton also had many years in the top flight.
I have no doubt that if Argyle had mirrored Norwich, history wise, the fanbase would be pretty much identical.

Agreed! I find this 'Plymouth doesn't dserve a top flight club' irritating in the extreme. Mainly because it shifts the blame for failure away from its true cause - the succession of useless boards - onto the fans. In fact I'd say the fan base has held up very well considering the sheer hopelessness of our situation with regards to ever getting in to the big time because of our history of 'boards' being bereft of any ambition, being completely outclassed and, more recently, morally questionable and greedy.

How about a proven goalscorer on £10k a week until the end of the season = £200k. Cost of relegation to BSP immense.

Iggy wrote:

How about a proven goalscorer on £10k a week until the end of the season = £200k. Cost of relegation to BSP immense.

In theory that's brilliant sense, but I think we would struggle to supply a proven goalscorer with enough chances to guarantee he scores the goals. So then it's a creative midfielder as well @ £200k, again still better than relegation, and crowds would increase to help fund it, but what if one or both get injured? I guess if it were that easy, there might even be a few decent English managers

What I actually said was "The City" has the club it deserves. This has got to do with the population of the City in general not the fanbase which is very low per population. Whether we like it or not the numbers are not big enough and haven't been for a long time now. We get large crowds occasionally but this is casual visitors who have little intention of coming back for the next game. We have some success and pick up extras but as soon as things are not so good or it isn't a one off special game then it goes down rapidly. There were 13000 at Torquay and if you take away the away contingent there were 11000 or so for us. How many were at the previous home game and how many will be at the next. Around 40000 at Wembley for the play off final. The pattern is there for all to see all of the time. A fanbase is generally what you see most weeks not occasionally. Potential fanbase is a different thing. This argument is an age old one. What comes first. Somebody to invest a lot in an attempt to attract people to come or the people to come to show it is in somebodies interests to invest. It is a big ask to expect somebody to throw their own money into Argyle in a hope it will pay off. We pay a small amount of money comparitively without risking our own fortune but if we were on the Board would we risk it all ourselves? Easy to say yes when it is unlikely to be put to the test.

But modern day board members don't risk their own money. They even buy football clubs with the club's own money as with Manchester United. As has happend here, they risk the assets of the club. Few 'investors' have lost money owning a football club in England. And while they have control, they don't half earn with their money. Over the last decade, England has been awash with executives lending money at very profitable rates and awarding themselves a lot of lucrative contracted work.
Sensible, if you are waiting for people to turn up before there is any hope of a decent day's entertainment, I would suggest that's not a very sensible thing to do... you'll be waiting a very long time.

So who made money during Argyle's Administration who were on the Board previously then? Are you telling me none of them lost anything?

I know it is a question of what comes first as with chicken and egg but the population don't show their committment so it is unlikely is what I'm saying that anyone is going to show their cash. Stalemate hence the problem. We could do with a Jack Walker aka Blackburn but we ain't going to get one are we.

Sensiblegreeny wrote:

So who made money during Argyle's Administration who were on the Board previously then? Are you telling me none of them lost anything?

Well there you go SG, we don't know, do we. We don't even know if some debts are hanging around our necks waiting for our rise out of the ashes. They won't publish the details. Makes you wonder why they won't, doesn't it.