Please don't kick me

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Tringreen wrote:

Historically, before the other clubs achieved top flight status and cemented their 20k fanbases, our attendance figures were on a par with the likes of Norwich, Ipswich, Southampton...

But this is a pointless argument. The fact is that they reached the top flight, you didn't and your core fanbase is never likely to be anything like theirs ever again. To argue what might have been is an amusing parlour game, but ultimately it's an exercise in the pointless discipline of counter-factual history. Anyway, you have to go back to around 1960 to find a time when you got 20k anything like consistently. That's FIFTY-THREE YEARS AGO. How far back do you want to go? Most people attending matches back then are probably dead now.

We're talking about a different universe in those days - the whole social, cultural and economic landscape was vastly different, as was the entire basis of league competition. In those days the FA deliberately encouraged measures to ensure equal competition among all 92 clubs - the Maximum Wage and Tied Contracts. It's interesting to look at the attendances and success of certain clubs like ours after the Maximum Wage had been abolished and the George Eastham case began the move away from tied contracts that ended with Bosman and Freedom-Of-Contract. There is a very rough downward trend that you can see, which I believe partly has something to do with the fact that some clubs' natural disadvantages were masked to some degree by the artificially levelled playing field. Of course you should also consider the fact that even when the playing field was far more level, you still never managed to get to the top flight.

By the rationale of taking what counts as footballing ancient history into consideration, Corinthian Casuals are a sleeping giant, just waiting to regain their place as a major club; Lancashire Cricket club just need the right owner to take them back to the days when 50'000 watched a roses match in the County Championship; and the popularity of baseball in prewar England means that Baseball is a "sleeping giant sport" just waiting to regain the 10'000 crowds it once enjoyed.

The implications for international relations are even more staggering - Turkey is surely just waiting for the right moment to regain its rightful place as a world superpower; as are Austria, Hungary and Portugal. Soon we will once again be looking to Belgium as one of the world's economic powerhouses as it was at the outbreak of the Great War and Japan can look forward to kicking the Russian Navy's backside.

I'm sorry Tring - it's just a nonsensical argument

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.... and double that of ECFC.

But why are you comparing yourself to us? Most of us know we're small (don't believe what you read on Exeweb). In any case doesn't the fact that we averaged around 10'000 for a fair few years until the mid-late fifties further demonstrate how bogus your argument is? I don't expect to see us averaging 10,000 again on a regular basis any time soon (even if we could find room) any more than I expect to see you consistently averaging 20'000 - or even 15'000.

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Our first season back in the Championship saw gates of circa 17k, larger than corresponding results for Cardiff, Swansea, Bristol City, Reading etc.

Cardiff and Bristol City? The major team from the capital of an entire nation and the top team from the only genuinely big city bar London in the South of England - both clubs being from cities that are larger, far less isolated, far better connected to the rest of the country, more prosperous and more important in a national context? Are you seriously comparing Plymouth Argyle to them on the basis of a season that is a complete aberration when viewed in any sort of context? Wow - just wow. (I'll leave aside the fact that when you were regularly getting 20k in the fifties Cardiff were achieving attendances in the 30k region).

This whole attendance thing is largely overstated anyway. Unless you believe that you are somehow going to magic up something to compare to the really huge attendances then the 15 and 20ks of this world are never going to be a game-changer in the face of some of the cash available to other clubs in the Championship. The parachute payments are going up as well as the TV contract, which means that from next year, the relegated clubs will be pocketing around £80 million before they ever kick a ball in the 2nd tier.

On top of that you have all sorts of factors - the cachet/reputation of a club or city, its economics and demographics, it's isolation, the strength of the football culture in the region and so on. In most cases the clubs that PAFC fans keep comparing themselves with have more of these factors in their favour. I couldn't believe what I was reading when someone compared PAFC to Brighton. For one thing the population element of the comparison was an example of the use of a doubly bogus population comparison - the City is Brighton AND HOVE - i.e Brighton and Hove are constituents parts of the city in the way Buda and Pest are part of Budapest. Even if you just compare the artificial boundaries of Brighton and Hove and Plymouth the former is bigger; if you compare the Urban Area it's nearly twice the size. That's notwithstanding the fact that Brighton is possibly one of the premier cities of its size in the country - talk about a place being full of the minted, comfortable middle-class and movers and shakers who want to get away from London. It's not nicknamed "London-On-Sea" for nothing. I'm afraid that there is no favourable comparison between Brighton and Hove and Plymouth except in the minds of the most partisan of Plymothians.

Any attendance comparison is meaningless, because of the status of Brighton fans as the second most sh*t on in Football League history. Not only did they have to endure the abomination of the Withdean, as my curmudgeonly Grecian friend pointed out, but they also had to spend two seasons playing 70 miles away in the hell-hole that is Gillingham - a town with no direct rail links to Brighton as far as I know. If you look at the Goldstone ground era their attendances were at least equal to yours and often significantly better. When you were both in the 2nd tier in the late Seventies they had better, or much better attendances and even had a 14k and 17k in the third tier in the early seventies, something you haven't really come close to.

Even Reading, which was a bit of a tip at one time, is getting more affluent, with a nice bit of regeneration having taken place in the city centre (although curiously some of the tattier areas are also close to the centre). You can see some serious money going into some of the houses being built on the bank of the Thames and so on. Again it's significantly bigger than Plymouth - the arbitrary city population doesn't show this, because for one thing I believe part of Reading proper comes under Wokingham council now, but the Urban Area has over 100'000 more citizens than you do. Of course in terms of location it's chalk and cheese - close enough to London, great rail links to London and the West and so on.

If you try and look at various clubs and cities in context there are often underlying lessons. Cardiff and Bristol have never yet played in the Premier League in twenty-odd years of trying and only rarely in the top flight full stop, despite their natural advantages over yourselves. One reason that has often been cited is the fact that rugby is big in both regions and football correspondingly less so. Ring any bells?

Reading and Cardiff have both only got anywhere close to the Premier League because of minted owners - in the case of Madejski he was able to raise them to a competitive level in the Championship on around £40m spent in ten or fifteen years, of which £25m went on the stadium. If he were to start the project next year, he would not only be up against clubs awash with ex-PL money and parachute payments but also the minted owners that can be found in at least half the other clubs, if not more. For example, the likes of the super-rich Egyptian owners of Hull, who've put £50m pounds into the club in TWO YEARS, as well as the likes of Watford, owned by minted Italians, who already own two other top-flight clubs in Spain and Italy and are using a loophole in loan regulations to effectively turn Watford into a finishing school for elite young players from Udinese and Granada. Don't you remember Holloway complaining that the system was wrong and that some of their players who had beaten his Palace side were "among the very best I've ever seen at that age"? All this without including bigger clubs than yourselves like Leeds, Wednesday, Ipswich and Wolves.

It's getting to the point where mere money is not enough - you need mega money. You should note that Madejski, even though he is worth £200 million, was losing significant money with Reading and turned to the young Russian who heads TSI because Reading needed more money to sustain themselves in the Premier League. (In reality the young Russian owner is being backed by daddy, who controls the paper producing industry in Russia.)

Of the 24 clubs in the npower Championship, 23 have already played in the top flight and 21 have played in the Premier League - Millwall missed out on a Premier League place in the playoffs (and of course they're in London). Most have played in the top flight multiple times and have a better modern history in the 2nd tier than you do. The only incontrovertibly less successful club than you is Peterborough United, who have only been a League club since 1960 - and they matched your tenth place in your so-called promotion season only ten years before.

I'm not trying to do you down. However I just cannot see how, in the modern era, you are ever going to find the money and overcome the advantages most of the clubs in the second tier are always likely to have from now on. It's a shame that you pin all your hopes on the mythical aim of the top flight. Dreams are good things, but when they become a crutch rather than an inspiration, they turn into obsessions - and obsessions are always damaging.

Jesus wept,you've got some stickabiliity,i'll say that much for you.Just makes me wonder what on earth the motivation is for someone to study another clubs history in such detail and with such obvious concern.

He could take over from GOS.

Greenjock wrote:

...

I don't see why he's so worried really when we're piss poor and you're high-flying and with a much better away record than we have a home record ...

Probably because derbies are a lottery and we have an injury crisis. We had an injury/illness crisis at the last away derby and you won.

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I started a thread about Gillingham supplying the 28 Accrington fans with free pies on Saturday for making the long journey in such adverse weather conditions. To me those 28 Accrington fans are more deserving of praise than any other fans last week....

I couldn't agree more. I used to make a similar point when I used to post on exeweb regularly to those who derided teams in the Conference as tinpot. The three Leigh RMI fans who travelled down on a cold Tuesday night, with nothing to play for and knowing that they were overwhelmingly odds-on to lose, had more of my admiration than fans who travel to games where the opposite is true.

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I do feel though that if the new stand is done properly making a capacity of over 20,000 we will eventually see the sold out signs displayed. People will come to see the new facilities and there are obviously more than 20,000 floating fans in and around Plymouth. I would say that if we survive the drop this season and the right investment is made in the playing and coaching side, that we could be challenging for promotion next season and allied to a super shiny new stand that people will want to see, crowds of around the capacity will happen, towards the end of the season and at Christmas and Easter....

It's likely that you will get a temporary bounce from a new stand. However unless that's accompanied by unbroken success it's unlikely to last - it's ony one stand and some retail facilities after all. New grounds and stands are not the panacea they're made out to be, as we know only too well. Chesterfield are a good example - they had a new ground built for them by the rich man who the Trust sold out to. This was duly accompanied by promotion and a doubling of crowds, but they were quickly relegated again and their crowds are currently only about 1'000 more than they ever were in the same division.

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Then, again a big if, League 1 gates should be higher to start off with and again given a fair wind and some good results, I know for sure that 20,000 is easily achievable if only for half a dozen games or so...

I'm genuinely perplexed by this analysis. You haven't achieved 20'000 crowds for over fifty years - and only then in an era when there was a far more favourable context and everyone had bigger crowds. Why do you think you would buck that trend when the recession is leading to a steady fall in overall attendances?

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.... There is nothing like a winning team to bring the fans out of the woodwork. 9 years ago I started seeing the usually few empty spaces slowly filling up as the season went on ... for half a season or so in League 2 parts of the ground were under construction and not available to use, so given the upturn in form and the fact that the new parts of the stadium were open for all, crowds automatically increased.

???

But you didn't even achieve 20'000 crowds then - and the economy was robust at that time.

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The victory over QPR which guaranteed prmotion to the Championship again saw a sold out Home Park of around 20k and thousands more wanted tickets. Then on our final home game of the season against Cheltenham, the sold out signs were again up...

That happens almost everywhere. It's not unique to Plymouth Argyle. It certainly doesn't demonstrate that there is some kind of rare, untapped potential at HP.

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...but because there is a large potential fanbase the glory games sold out.

That is a non-sequitur. All that example means, is that like virtually every club in the land, some people enjoy the hype. We sold out for glory games too and for some could have sold yet more tickets. I would never argue that simply becasue of that fact we somehow have potential 10'000 crowds waiting tantalisingly out of reach. That makes no sense.

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... I do think (having bigger crowds) gives us a much better chance of being more successful in the long run....

Of course. Or at least it should. I would be stupid to argue that Argyle are not a bigger club with more potential, all things being equal - although I get the feeling that Brent is simply not interested in the playing side and won't do any more than he has to. If that's true and he stays for long enough, the danger of PAFC experiencing a paradigm shift downwards is very real. However, my principal argument is simply that some of you are vastly exaggerating the size of your club and it's associated potential and that being obsessed with the unlikely prospect of your ever reaching the Premier League will do you no good in the long run.

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The plastics point raised by LT about the Santos game is fair enough but again do you think Argyle gave a toss who the fans were in amongst the 37,000? Again of course not. And do you blame anyone going to see probably the greatest footballer of all time? I don't.

That's not the point we were making. We were simply disputing Tring's assertion that the 37,000 was an indication of Argyle's true potential, rather than a complete aberration.

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If Lionel Messi rocked up for a friendly against Southend with Barcelona this year it would guarantee a sell-out crowd whatever Roots Hall holds. And they are on the verge of moving to a new stadium which if they did play Barcelona in a friendly would guarantee bigger gates afterwards because of the new stadium and because fathers who took their sons to see the great Messi and co would have their interest in Southend re-ignited, and hopefully a new fan for life in their son, that's how supporting a club goes...

I don't think it works like that. Most of those kids would most likely go back to supporting their favourite Premier League team as soon as Messi got on the plane back to Barcelona. I can't see too many of them being misty-eyed about the prospect of Southend v Accrington or whoever. That theory is disproved by your own experience - how many kids in the Santos crowd became lifelong fans and how much difference did it make to your future attendances? It's difficult to discern any significant long-term effect whatsoever.

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Again with that principle I would think that the extra attendance the new stand would attract, which it would just out of curiousity alone, would include some children who will become hooked and want to go every weeek...

Possibly - but how many would regularly attend for life is open to debate.

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which gives the parents a great excuse to be turning up regularly again...

If they could afford it.

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...attracting the kids before they swear allegiance to Liverpool or United is the key. There is nothing like live football. You can watch all the premier league games you want but it cannot compete with the noise, colour and atmosphere that is created at a game you attend...

But that is only your opinion. In terms of the general public, your premise is patently false; otherwise the Premier League would not be as successful as it is and Football League attendances would not be dropping.

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If James Brent and his family really have got the bug I would hope that he would understand this principle. If he sells Argyle in 3 years time after we get promoted I would like to think that he would be an Argyle fan for life along with his kids, but that depends on where his priorities lie

It's not really important how he feels - it's what he does that matters. Judging from his background Brent is almost certainly a very ruthless individual indeed, behind the amiable facade. As such he is unlikely to let emotion get in the way of making money. The fact that there is little evidence of a strategy on the playing side is unlikely to be a coincidence. I don't believe that Brent has the slightest interest in spending his money on anything that will leave you with a legacy for the future aside from the stand, even if any investment would be only be in the form of a loan. He's only building the stand because he's obliged to by the agreement with PCC.

This is just one of many points that a lot of PAFC seem to miss. For example, witness the furore about the capacity of the new stand. The reality of your future is likely to be far more dependent on the money raised IN the stand from the associated revenue-generating activities rather than selling extra tickets. It already seems that mission creep from Brent's commercial interests may affect this adversely - you would be far better served by addressing this than getting preoccupied with some bizarre obsession about "prestige", or the virtual income from a few thousand extra seats that is unlikely to be realised any time soon.

Iggy wrote:

He could take over from GOS.

Ok, hands up who got past the first paragraph?

Greenskin wrote:

...Jesus wept,you've got some stickabiliity,i'll say that much for you.Just makes me wonder what on earth the motivation is for someone to study another clubs history in such detail and with such obvious concern.

It's simple really. The situation at PAFC is fascinating in and of itself; there are certain aspects of it that seem unjust and frustrate me in the way it would with anybody else - I'm particularly frustrated at the way some people refuse to acknowledge the true implications of Brent's position at Citigroup. For example, I find the attitude towards Brent of the likes of the PASOTI poster X-Isle contradictory and bizarre beyond belief.

It frustrates me that some of you are inviting misfortune because of what I believe to be misguided and unrealistic beliefs and ambitions. The fact that it concerns a club I obviously know reasonably well is another factor. Ultimately the situation you find yourself in reflects something close to my heart - i.e the belief that fans of all but a few clubs are far better off taking control of their own destiny and accepting the consequences of that choice than bowing and scraping to a rich man simply in order to chase the so-called "dream".

The Red Star wrote:

...

As for Exeter City, we aint going bust, we will tick on and in truth that is all I care about. I prefer supporting a team that wins feck all, because I was born here...

Spot on - although I wasn't born in Exeter. I went to school there though and consider it "my" city and Devon "my" county.

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PS> I can write all this in jest because this is a forum with free thinking, intelligent people...I could not on Pasoti because I too was banned after 2 posts. They be thik they be. As for walking from the station....I will be driving and wearing jeans.

Really? What did you get banned for?

Incidentally, the yahoo mail account that I use more or less solely to join forums was hacked recently - not long after I pointed out Brent's background. It's the one I used to join PASOTI.

Coincidence?

Iggy wrote:

City are woorried about our potential, why else would their fans waste hours of their time telling us why we are so insignificant?
FOOKIN HUGE WE ARE.

I don't think you're insignificant - just not as big as some of you seem to think you are. In itself that's an irrelevance - unfortunately when it gets out of hand it makes you easy pickings for the likes of Brent, which is what really bothers me. If I was that interested in doing you down, then why didn't I post on any Plymouth forum until the shenanigans over the adminsitration started becoming clearer and clearer? It's not as though I didn't have many opportunities to gloat before if that was all I was about .

Chemical Ali wrote:

I don't know HOW you can say Plymouth is in decline when we've got Lidl's and Aldi's being built EVERYWHERE. You can stick John Lewis up your grecian asses. Its only a Waitrose with clothes and we've got one of them in Saltash (temporarily adopted into Plymouth for this reasoning)

Lidl and Aldi are low-cost supermarkets aimed at the poor, not prestige retail outlets. The proliferation of such stores if true, is not a sign of regeneration - in fact in many cases it's quite the opposite. There's nothing wrong with that - I'm not exactly minted myself at the moment and I don't like the modern trend of sneering at those who are struggling and vunerable or attacking people on benefits. my vote for the second most embarassing and cringeworthy anti-Argyle ECFC chant, after the execrable Bradley Wright-Phillips abomination (also possibly the most counter-productive chant in history) goes to the "benefits" chant, which is crass beyond belief.

The fact is that at the moment any neutral would agree that Exeter is more successful than Plymouth. Who knows how long that will last, but it's just the way it happens to be right now. In fact Exeter is more successful than a lot of places - the city has one of the lowest proportions of empty shops anywhere in the country for example. Its major problem is an affordable housing crisis, which is itself a result of the affluence of the City and East Devon in general, which has caused house prices and rents to spiral in many areas.

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Chemical Ali wrote:

I don't know HOW you can say Plymouth is in decline when we've got Lidl's and Aldi's being built EVERYWHERE. You can stick John Lewis up your grecian asses. Its only a Waitrose with clothes and we've got one of them in Saltash (temporarily adopted into Plymouth for this reasoning)

Lidl and Aldi are low-cost supermarkets aimed at the poor, not prestige retail outlets. The proliferation of such stores if true, is not a sign of regeneration - in fact in many cases it's quite the opposite.

Jabba the Whoosh.

Czarcasm wrote:

If the rugby team up there continues to thrive, which looks odds-on, that'll be probably the biggest factor in the football team being perrenial 4th/5th tier bottom feeders (with the odd nosebleed in div3) to an even bigger degree in years to come...

Except that the Chiefs have had no discernible effect on our average gates whatsoever. There are other factors beyond the Chiefs preventing us from hitting the heights. If you are saying that being located in the South-West, a centre of the rugby industry, is a handicap, then I completely agree. However that applies to all the Devon clubs, including yourselves.

In any case the crowing about the Chiefs by some of you is very strange. There is no doubt that the club is booming and that it's facilities are impressive, however isn't that likely to effect you in certain ways too?

The Chiefs are likely to have a top-class 20'000 seat arena long before you do. As part of that expansion, they will have excellent conference facilities. These facilities will be easily accessible by a Motorway on a direct route to London, with easy links to the Midlands and beyond and supplemented by another major road route in reserve. They will also be accessible by two major train routes to London, with a connecting line and station very close to the stadium itself. To cap it all there is an airport easily and quickly accessible by expressways for all bar a short part of the route. I venture to suggest that the stadium will have a major impact on the potential of conference facilities in a city notoriously poorly connected to the rest of the UK.

There is also the fact that your own somewhat dubious argument about your potential catchment area suggests that logically the Chiefs must affect you as well. Rugby is popular everywhere in Devon. Someone living 10 miles east of Plymouth only has 30 miles to go to watch elite rugby at an easily accessible stadium as opposed to lower league football somewhere less accessible. I don't personally see it being a major issue, but if you are trying to argue that you can attract fans from Truro, then logically the Chiefs can attract fans from Ivybridge and so on.

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There just isn't the head of population to sustain...anything other than what you've had so far.

True - that really doesn't bother me. I don't support Exeter City because of some impossible yearning for the heights. That would be the very definition of futility. In an era of hopelessly skewed competition, nobody is likely to rise much above their historic position without the injection of serious money, yourselves included.

Czarcasm wrote:

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Chemical Ali wrote:

I don't know HOW you can say Plymouth is in decline when we've got Lidl's and Aldi's being built EVERYWHERE. You can stick John Lewis up your grecian asses. Its only a Waitrose with clothes and we've got one of them in Saltash (temporarily adopted into Plymouth for this reasoning)

Lidl and Aldi are low-cost supermarkets aimed at the poor, not prestige retail outlets. The proliferation of such stores if true, is not a sign of regeneration - in fact in many cases it's quite the opposite.

Jabba the Whoosh.

Oh. Was that Czarcasm?

jabba the gut ecfc wrote:

Greenjock wrote:

...

I don't see why he's so worried really when we're piss poor and you're high-flying and with a much better away record than we have a home record ...

Probably because derbies are a lottery and we have an injury crisis. We had an injury/illness crisis at the last away derby and you won.

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I started a thread about Gillingham supplying the 28 Accrington fans with free pies on Saturday for making the long journey in such adverse weather conditions. To me those 28 Accrington fans are more deserving of praise than any other fans last week....

I couldn't agree more. I used to make a similar point when I used to post on exeweb regularly to those who derided teams in the Conference as tinpot. The three Leigh RMI fans who travelled down on a cold Tuesday night, with nothing to play for and knowing that they were overwhelmingly odds-on to lose, had more of my admiration than fans who travel to games where the opposite is true.

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I do feel though that if the new stand is done properly making a capacity of over 20,000 we will eventually see the sold out signs displayed. People will come to see the new facilities and there are obviously more than 20,000 floating fans in and around Plymouth. I would say that if we survive the drop this season and the right investment is made in the playing and coaching side, that we could be challenging for promotion next season and allied to a super shiny new stand that people will want to see, crowds of around the capacity will happen, towards the end of the season and at Christmas and Easter....

It's likely that you will get a temporary bounce from a new stand. However unless that's accompanied by unbroken success it's unlikely to last - it's ony one stand and some retail facilities after all. New grounds and stands are not the panacea they're made out to be, as we know only too well. Chesterfield are a good example - they had a new ground built for them by the rich man who the Trust sold out to. This was duly accompanied by promotion and a doubling of crowds, but they were quickly relegated again and their crowds are currently only about 1'000 more than they ever were in the same division.

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Then, again a big if, League 1 gates should be higher to start off with and again given a fair wind and some good results, I know for sure that 20,000 is easily achievable if only for half a dozen games or so...

I'm genuinely perplexed by this analysis. You haven't achieved 20'000 crowds for over fifty years - and only then in an era when there was a far more favourable context and everyone had bigger crowds. Why do you think you would buck that trend when the recession is leading to a steady fall in overall attendances?

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.... There is nothing like a winning team to bring the fans out of the woodwork. 9 years ago I started seeing the usually few empty spaces slowly filling up as the season went on ... for half a season or so in League 2 parts of the ground were under construction and not available to use, so given the upturn in form and the fact that the new parts of the stadium were open for all, crowds automatically increased.

???

But you didn't even achieve 20'000 crowds then - and the economy was robust at that time.

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The victory over QPR which guaranteed prmotion to the Championship again saw a sold out Home Park of around 20k and thousands more wanted tickets. Then on our final home game of the season against Cheltenham, the sold out signs were again up...

That happens almost everywhere. It's not unique to Plymouth Argyle. It certainly doesn't demonstrate that there is some kind of rare, untapped potential at HP.

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...but because there is a large potential fanbase the glory games sold out.

That is a non-sequitur. All that example means, is that like virtually every club in the land, some people enjoy the hype. We sold out for glory games too and for some could have sold yet more tickets. I would never argue that simply becasue of that fact we somehow have potential 10'000 crowds waiting tantalisingly out of reach. That makes no sense.

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... I do think (having bigger crowds) gives us a much better chance of being more successful in the long run....

Of course. Or at least it should. I would be stupid to argue that Argyle are not a bigger club with more potential, all things being equal - although I get the feeling that Brent is simply not interested in the playing side and won't do any more than he has to. If that's true and he stays for long enough, the danger of PAFC experiencing a paradigm shift downwards is very real. However, my principal argument is simply that some of you are vastly exaggerating the size of your club and it's associated potential and that being obsessed with the unlikely prospect of your ever reaching the Premier League will do you no good in the long run.

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The plastics point raised by LT about the Santos game is fair enough but again do you think Argyle gave a toss who the fans were in amongst the 37,000? Again of course not. And do you blame anyone going to see probably the greatest footballer of all time? I don't.

That's not the point we were making. We were simply disputing Tring's assertion that the 37,000 was an indication of Argyle's true potential, rather than a complete aberration.

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If Lionel Messi rocked up for a friendly against Southend with Barcelona this year it would guarantee a sell-out crowd whatever Roots Hall holds. And they are on the verge of moving to a new stadium which if they did play Barcelona in a friendly would guarantee bigger gates afterwards because of the new stadium and because fathers who took their sons to see the great Messi and co would have their interest in Southend re-ignited, and hopefully a new fan for life in their son, that's how supporting a club goes...

I don't think it works like that. Most of those kids would most likely go back to supporting their favourite Premier League team as soon as Messi got on the plane back to Barcelona. I can't see too many of them being misty-eyed about the prospect of Southend v Accrington or whoever. That theory is disproved by your own experience - how many kids in the Santos crowd became lifelong fans and how much difference did it make to your future attendances? It's difficult to discern any significant long-term effect whatsoever.

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Again with that principle I would think that the extra attendance the new stand would attract, which it would just out of curiousity alone, would include some children who will become hooked and want to go every weeek...

Possibly - but how many would regularly attend for life is open to debate.

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which gives the parents a great excuse to be turning up regularly again...

If they could afford it.

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...attracting the kids before they swear allegiance to Liverpool or United is the key. There is nothing like live football. You can watch all the premier league games you want but it cannot compete with the noise, colour and atmosphere that is created at a game you attend...

But that is only your opinion. In terms of the general public, your premise is patently false; otherwise the Premier League would not be as successful as it is and Football League attendances would not be dropping.

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If James Brent and his family really have got the bug I would hope that he would understand this principle. If he sells Argyle in 3 years time after we get promoted I would like to think that he would be an Argyle fan for life along with his kids, but that depends on where his priorities lie

It's not really important how he feels - it's what he does that matters. Judging from his background Brent is almost certainly a very ruthless individual indeed, behind the amiable facade. As such he is unlikely to let emotion get in the way of making money. The fact that there is little evidence of a strategy on the playing side is unlikely to be a coincidence. I don't believe that Brent has the slightest interest in spending his money on anything that will leave you with a legacy for the future aside from the stand, even if any investment would be only be in the form of a loan. He's only building the stand because he's obliged to by the agreement with PCC.

This is just one of many points that a lot of PAFC seem to miss. For example, witness the furore about the capacity of the new stand. The reality of your future is likely to be far more dependent on the money raised IN the stand from the associated revenue-generating activities rather than selling extra tickets. It already seems that mission creep from Brent's commercial interests may affect this adversely - you would be far better served by addressing this than getting preoccupied with some bizarre obsession about "prestige", or the virtual income from a few thousand extra seats that is unlikely to be realised any time soon.

OK I can't be fooked to answer all of your points, good to debate though, but a few things struck me from your reply.

We haven't achieved 20,000 gates for 50 years? In 2004 against QPR a sell-out 20,000 gate and again for the last game of the season, and 4 or 5 games with 17,000+ crowds, in League 1.

The following season in the Championship we had several gates of 20,000 or thereabouts so I don't get where your info is coming from. Actually I've just checked and it was 2 league games with 20,000+ and an FA Cup tie home to Everton with another 5 or 6 games of 18 and 19,000+ gates.

The 2006-7 season we started off with gates of around 15-16,000 and after a poor run the gates understandably dropped but we still had an 18,000 and 20,652 in the FA Cup.

Gates did drop off after that, even when Holloway had us playing really well and winning. I've no idea why that was, not my fault I was serving a 3yr football ban then and after that season we were poor and so was the football so gates were again lower with 15k at best.

Still that's a fair few 20k gates and many more of 17-18,000 out of a capacity of around 21,000 and there's segregation so probably just under 20,000 in reality.

I could go further back and find other 20k games like the Bristol City promotion night in 86, Pompey at home in 87 with 21k, when incidentally I was at the away game at St. Andrews the week before as we lost to Birmingham in front of 8696 and the away game at Roker Park when we lost 2-1 against Sunderland in front of just over 10,000. For our home games against Sunderland and Birmingham that season we had 13,000+ gates so much higher than Birmingham and Sunderland.

27,566 against Everton in the FA Cup in 1989 is another notable game I can think of, and the 35,000ish for the Derby Quarter Final in 84 so your 50 years is a long way wide of the mark.

Now I've spent so long looking up the gates I haven't got time to answer your other points but I will say that I was taken to one Argyle game when I was about 11 and loved it, then went to my first game by myself at aged 12 or 13 against the European Champions Aston Villa in a pre-season friendly and I was totally hooked and I would expect that many on here will have similar stories. And I wasn't Plymouth born and bred or even living in Plymouth, I was a Scottish born lad who lived 60 miles from Plymouth but it became my big passion because my father was football mad and passed that on to me. There wasn't a huge surge of new fans after the Santos game as you said but Argyle weren't pulling up any trees on the pitch and that is ultimately what will bring the crowds.

Periods of mid-table mediocrity or worse like the shit we have endured over the last 5 or 6 years will inevitably mean lower attendances and yet we are still one of the best supported clubs in the league languishing at the foot of the table.

I still know that if Brent is the man he and his disciples claim he his and he is really going to invest in the team and wants the club to be successful then there definitely is the potential to have crowds of around 20k if the ground will hold that many. Success breeds success and a winning Argyle side would get gates of over 15k in this league if we were as successful as we were 8 or 9 years ago, and then more again when we climbed the leagues.

If Argyle stay up and this new Grandstand is built the way the fans want then I don't see why the club can't be succesful again in the not too distant future, especially if the businesses in the Grandstand make money for the club. Maybe I'm a bit of an optimist saying that but Sheridan is doing a job now unlike the clueless Fletcher, and has got Chesterfield promoted out of this league recently.

Greenjock - I'm talking about AVERAGE gates. As I said you have rarely even approached that for over fifty years.

I'm not arguing that you could never achieve 20'000 gates - that is self-evidently false. However by your own admission they are relatively rare and mostly associated with unusual events - you aren't going to be playing Everton every week. That Everton game was the same round in which we filled the ground for the Manchester United replay and it would be equally pointless to use that as a benchmark for anything.

I can't understand the logic of getting so worked up about a few thousand extra seats that history shows will rarely be used and devoting less attention to the facilities in the structure itself

Greenjock wrote:

I was at the away game at St. Andrews the week before as we lost to Birmingham in front of 8696 and the away game at Roker Park when we lost 2-1 against Sunderland in front of just over 10,000. For our home games against Sunderland and Birmingham that season we had 13,000+ gates so much higher than Birmingham and Sunderland.

Easily explained when you put it into context, Brummies and Macams have the choice of watching Argyle or doing nothing at all, no contest, Janners have a chance of watching real big clubs, form an orderly queue please.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Greenjock wrote:

I was at the away game at St. Andrews the week before as we lost to Birmingham in front of 8696 and the away game at Roker Park when we lost 2-1 against Sunderland in front of just over 10,000. For our home games against Sunderland and Birmingham that season we had 13,000+ gates so much higher than Birmingham and Sunderland.

Easily explained when you put it into context, Brummies and Macams have the choice of watching Argyle or doing nothing at all, no contest, Janners have a chance of watching real big clubs, form an orderly queue please.

Hence the need for a mahoosive new grandstand

Gert Loinz wrote:

Hence the lack of any need for a mahoosive new grandstand in the forseeable future

Amended for factuals.

Right so we should have a ground with a capacity for our average gate? Ok that won't be lacking ambition of any kind.

So do we take the average of the last 50 years as you allude to? Or the average from this season? Or from when the ground was being developed 10 years ago?

And on that basis you'd be happy with a shoebox at Sid James Park?

I'm not sure if that's what Brighton have done, taken the average from a set time which included playing at the Withdean, and I know they are backed by Tony Bloom and sold the naming rights etc and I have no problem with losing the name Home Park if it meant we could buy some decent players. Obviously it would be the FES something, just like the FES Devonport End we have now and everyone calls it by that name.

Maybe a safe standing area which could be the FES TERASS? Is that how you spell Terrace?

If we limited ourself to our average for the 2003/04 season, we'd have lost out on 24500 customers. (3500 x 7). Given that some of those games would have attracted more if we'd have the capacity, that figure is even higher. Averaged spend, a conservative tenner? 250k, cya later. We would never have been able to afford Simon Walton without that money ffs.

Greenjock wrote:

Right so we should have a ground with a capacity for our average gate? Ok that won't be lacking ambition of any kind.

No Jocky Boy, you should limit your ground to what you can afford, but as the council built the three quarters of Gnome Park which isn't currently falling down and you have not got a pot to piss in then your current capacity should be about a hundred and twenty watching players run around on a pitch that you never paid for.

By all means come back with your usual, "yeah but, yeah but, yeah but, yeah but look at exeter City" just remember though that we paid for our pitch and we are not spitting our collective dummy out moaning about getting a new stand for nowt.

Yup your administration cost nobody a penny did it?

Your feckin pitch couldn't possibly cost anything much anyway? The amount of shit on it regularly doesn't require a groundsman, so he can go and help out the others repairing your dry stone wall terracing.

ECFC the only pitch in the country that regularly gives a large crop of mushrooms

Greenjock wrote:

Yup your administration cost nobody a penny did it?

Your feckin pitch couldn't possibly cost anything much anyway? The amount of shit on it regularly doesn't require a groundsman, so he can go and help out the others repairing your dry stone wall terracing.

MIIAAAOOOWWWW

After decades of missed opportunities, future league climbing and full houses now seem a long way off with the banker and his jamboys running the show but it will happen again and an imposing grandstand is an essential component to both inspire the staff and potential fanbase alike.
Anything less and our ambition will be limited to getting above City again.

Greenjock wrote:

Right so we should have a ground with a capacity for our average gate? Ok that won't be lacking ambition of any kind.

No. Even if you took the average of your 14 seasons in the 2nd tier in the last 45 or so years (11'067) a 17'000 seater stadium would be more than enough. You're average overall is probably below 10'000 during that time.

Quote :

So do we take the average of the last 50 years as you allude to? Or the average from this season? Or from when the ground was being developed 10 years ago?...

It depends on the cost/benefit analysis surely? You've only had a single season in the last 40 or so years where you averaged above even 15'000 - and that was after what was arguably the most successful period in your history, at a time when the economy was hot and people had money in their pockets. In the famed Holloway promotion season/season in which you finished eight points outside the playoffs, 2 points above mid-table and behind Colchester United, your average attendance was almost exactly 13'000. Sure you've had the occasional big crowd - but "occasional" is the word. You seem to think it's imperative to construct a football stand based on the absolute best-case scenario, so that you are almost never sold out, no matter what the cost. Nothing in your history or the closed-shop direction in which English and European football is heading, suggests that this best case scenario (i.e playing in the Premier League) is ever likely to occur.

It seems an odd way to go about things. By that logic Manchester United could justify building a stadium bigger than the Maracana and Barcelona could probably construct something that could be seen from outer space. Good luck in getting the Reluctant Bidder to fork out on the basis of that logic.

Quote :

And on that basis you'd be happy with a shoebox at Sid James Park?

You're hardly being offered an upscaled equivalent of a shoebox though, are you? Merely something that doesn't fit in with "The (improbable) Dream" and which you feel doesn't allow you to convince yourself that you're up there with the big boys. Well as I said, prestige doesn't pay the bills.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Reluctant Bidder appears to be sneaking in a few more revenue-generating projects - for himself - while you all run around wailing about a red herring and leave him to get on with it. He's probably quite happy that yet again, you are tilting at the wrong windmill.

Quote :

I'm not sure if that's what Brighton have done, taken the average from a set time which included playing at the Withdean.That would be silly...

You cannot sensibly compare yourselves to Brighton. If you want to talk about potential, then Brighton were always in a different universe to yourselves on that score. They have a far better location, a far better economy, a far more illustrious history and often a historically bigger and a less fickle fanbase, all things being equal. When they were in turmoil, knowing they were losing the Goldstone Ground and battling relegation, they had a similar attendance as you do now, when the only issue for most of your fans who don't read football forums is the lack of success. Even at the abomination that was the Withdean in the fourth tier they were getting 6k averages or so.

Quote :

I know they are backed by Tony Bloom...

Who, even though I would never want any private owner, no matter what they promised, is probably the best you could get if you want one. I'm afraid you can't simply gloss over that fact quite so easily. You are never likely to find yourselves in their position - few clubs, if any, ever are or have been. In fact I can't think of any other private owner with that sort of money, who you could be as sure would have the best interests of the club at heart. You certainly can't plan on that kind of total long-shot.