Promotion for Argyle?

[Gullscorer]

It's certainly a funny old game. Two years ago we were in the play-offs with Martin Ling. Argyle over the past few years have had problems on and off the pitch, and earlier this season were alongside us at the wrong end of the table. Look at them now..!!
Another two seasons and Argyle could be back in the Championship, and we could be in the Conference South..

On the other hand, we could be about to enter a new era of success at Plainmoor. It just needs a new approach and a few correct decisions by the board, and a focus on the Plainmoor pitch and success for the team, which will bring in bigger attendances and increased income. It's not rocket science..

Anyway, best of luck to the Pilgrims..

[Behind-the-Gulls]

It's certainly a funny old game. Two years ago we were in the play-offs with Martin Ling. Argyle over the past few years have had problems on and off the pitch, and earlier this season were alongside us at the wrong end of the table. Look at them now..!!
Another two seasons and Argyle could be back in the Championship, and we could be in the Conference South..

On the other hand, we could be about to enter a new era of success at Plainmoor. It just needs a new approach and a few correct decisions by the board, and a focus on the Plainmoor pitch and success for the team, which will bring in bigger attendances and increased income. It's not rocket science..

Anyway, best of luck to the Pilgrims..

Would think they have a decent chance of the play-offs now with the likes of Oxford,Southend and Fleetwood seemingly faltering. Key for them will be scoring goals and winning games at home-even we've scored one more! May fall just short this year but sure Sheridan will be looking for top three place next season.

[ferrarilover]

Argyle are a dreadful side who have got lucky with Reid. He'll go back to Yeovil next year and Argyle will do what Northampton have done this year having lost their goalscorer.

Matt.

[Gullscorer]

If only Torquay could get so lucky...

[AustrianAndyGull]

Or we could be 7.5 million in debt like Chesterfield and buy players and a new ground with money we don't have and expect creditors to either write the debts off or wait until such revenue is generated to pay it back. We could do that I guess and then we might be pushing for the title and get to Wembley in the paint pot trophy every year.

Torquay are always victims because they are run like victims and the whole place and fanbase feel like victims. Brought on by years of low expectations, realistic expectations too I suppose but now it just feels that we are have always been shit, are now still shit and will continue to be shit in the future and that is how fans see the club because they don't really know any different. Perhaps we SHOULD be a conference club and that is our level and we can spend year on year trying to win the league and watching us win games of football and win them well. We get jealous because other clubs do things like I've explained above, get away with it and often succeed whereas we don't. I think it is time we turned it on it's head and said good luck to them. Maybe we are missing a trick, I don't know. If we can't compete year on year and continue to play awful football then is it time for us to try and move up a notch and get into debt for it or drop into non league so that we may find our true level and we as fans can get some enjoyment out of watching some good football for a change and being relatively successful in terms of doing well in the league each year.

It's like being a fan of a lower half Prem team. What is the point in struggling every single year hoping to stay up just so that the club can get shitloads of tv money to help them buy more players who will only succeed in achieving the same league position the year after? Wouldn't it be better for those clubs to drop into the Championship, play better football and be more competitive albeit in a lower league and everything feels good? Then if they happen to get promoted again they can relax because they then know that if they were relegated again back into the Championship then it doesn't matter.

You get clubs like Newcastle who technically exist every year and these types of clubs don't even WANT Europa League! So it's either hope for a cup run or try and avoid relegation. What is the **** point in that?!!

The conference will be absolutely fine if we drop. Lower crowds and small away support to Plainmoor but it will be exciting because we would have a realistic chance of doing something and winning some games. Then there will be some really interesting away days instead of going to lego stadiums like Chesterfield. Places that one would probably not even consider going in their entire lives or places they have never even heard of but where we can go and take it all in.

At the start of this season what we all really wanted was to avoid relegation. Lower mid table would have represented success. Would fans have been willing to watch poor football for the next 10 years so long as we didn't go down? What is the ultimate point of supporting us? Fans say they are sick of watching crap football. Fans say they won't go anymore if we go down. So what is it to be then? Watch great entertaining football most weeks in the conference or watch total rubbish and struggle in league 2? I'm sure we COULD have league 2 football AND exciting football but that would take investment that we don't have IMO so do we go into debt or go down and find our true level?

Teams like Chesterfield are laughing at us and their fans are getting thoroughly rewarded for paying their entrance money each week, meanwhile we are getting fed up and disillusioned to the point where nobody is really bothered about even bothering to watch league 2 football at Plainmoor any more. If Chesterfield go up and we go down then so be it. They have played the system, made the right choices when it mattered and are on the up so that is THEIR success. If we stay up on the last day by a point then it is OUR success? Can this really be?

I say good luck to Argyle and Chesterfield and Exeter or whoever because I was only jealous that I support a club with seemingly little ambition. No hard feelings. Perhaps I SHOULD support Man City after all? :na: :}

If we go down I am going to embrace it and fully enjoy it and be there as much as I can. If we struggle in the conference and still play anal football then it will be very difficult to remain enthusiastic. Only time will tell and for now we focus on the job ahead and don't worry about what other teams are doing or how they have got there. Yes teams play the system and if the system is there to be abused, then like benefits claimants that is maybe the fault of the system rather than thinking that people will do the right thing. What IS the right thing anymore?

Supporting your club until you feel you cannot go anymore. You will know when the time comes but the time is not now nor will it be next season either so hang in there and give it some more time.

SQUIRRELS AND GULLS HAVE TO STICK TOGETHER.

[Gullscorer]

Well it looks as if, despite their recent history, Argyle are actually doing something right. They're now on the verge of the play-offs.

After being fortunate enough to end up with a decent owner who kept the club alive when it should have been dead, they were also lucky enough, or James Brent was shrewd enough, to appoint Sheridan as manager, shortly before we made the disastrous decision (certainly in retrospect) to bring in Alan Knill.

And despite their form being hardly any better then ours until recently, their fans for the most part continued to support their team, while our so-called supporters whinged and moaned and stayed away, leaving the hard core of dedicated followers to shout for their team home and away. It is these Gulls fans who deserve better than to see Torquay relegated.

[bengull]

Got too big for their boots, made wild, unrealistic ambitions that they couldn't possibly fulfil, entered administration and ended up paying 0.07% of what they owed to the businesspeople they owed it to. Ruined countless lives of honest, hardworking people in the process. Still giving it the big one because they've won a few games in the worst league two division in many a year.

Nope, not having it. Horrible club, haven't really paid their dues for the mistakes they've made in the past, won't learn and will no doubt do it all over again further down the line. Small club with delusions of grandeur. Take Reuben Reid out of the side and they are worse than us. Much rather be little old Torquay and 'always be s**t' than proudly march around with an air of superiority despite having destroyed many local businesses, set fire to a £17 million debt and seemingly get away with it and then have the temerity to laugh at an honest football club like ours for not being able to get by on a shoe-string. We might be useless, and we might go down, but we will do so having paid our bills. That to me, is more important in the overall scheme of things.

[Gullscorer]

So if there was a local business, a hotel for example, whose owners mis-spent their takings, failed to pay their bills, and ultimately went bankrupt, the business would be closed down and the hotel would be sold on. And if the new owner of the hotel re-opened it to effectively begin a new business of his own, the hotel would be the same, but the new owner could not be blamed for the misdeeds of the previous owners, nor should he be. Yet this is the ridiculous logic of your emotional attitude towards the new Argyle administration. But regardless of their recent history off the pitch, and whatever we may feel about them, the fact remains that Argyle are where they are, and we are where we are, because of decisions made over the past fifteen months. And we certainly deserve better..

[ferrarilover]

Not once was the new administration mentioned. Argyle are where they are because they won three consecutive games. Lose those, and they're down with Exeter. Take Reid out of that team and they'd have about 20 points. It's got bugger all to do with some grand plan, they're just a bad side who've hit a slice of form and enjoyed the rub of the green. A truly good side would be a long way top of this division this year.

Matt.

[Gullscorer]

I should have said Argyle's new owner, rather than administration. But the point is that to blame the club's new owner for the misdeeds of the previous one is the same as blaming the hotel's new owner for the misdeeds of the previous proprietor.

It's a poor league this season; Argyle don't have to be a great side to be where they are, but the fact remains that they're up there and we're down here. The difference between success and failure here is a very narrow one; it need only take one or two decisions over fifteen months to make that difference. Those decisions at the respective clubs may well be the difference between Argyle's current position and our own. Can't prove it, of course, but certainly we always seem to get the worst of things. Life ain't fair..

[bengull]

Hi Gullscorer,

Its irrelevant who is in charge of that ship, the name of the club is still the same. Plymouth Argyle FC failed to pay their bills some years ago, Plymouth Argyle FC are reaping the rewards for not having to pay what they owe in full some years later. Yes, well done for James Brent for not being as useless as his predecessor, and well done to Sheridan for getting his team half-way up an abysmal table but to compare their season with ours is pointless. For a start they get double the crowds and have ten times the catchment area as us.

Just because some new bloke has taken over the club, it doesn't mean we should forget the wrongs of their past. If I had re-laid their pitch and received £70 for what I had quoted to be a £100,000 (mathematicians put me right) job, and then had to sell my house and declare myself bankrupt on the back of that, I wouldn't let bygones be bygones because someone new is in charge, it doesn't work like that. Plymouth Argyle might have changed their boardroom, but their name has not changed.

You may want to act friendly with our two neighbours, that's your prerogative and I wouldn't criticise for you for that. Me? I think they are both morally bankrupt for the damage they have caused honest, hardworking tradesmen and renaissances shouldn't be heralded as deserved cause for celebration until they can act with a bit more humility and at least try and make good some of the mistakes they have made in the past instead of washing their hands with it.

No doubt PAFC have some sort of 'care in the community' schemes that they proudly state in their programmes and throughout their media, I would suggest trying to make amends to the people they robbed from would be a better way of spending their time.

That's not me being emotional, nor is it me extending my dislike of the club to fit my argument. If, as a club, you are foolish enough to get yourselves into £20 million debt, you should either pay back in full or fold the club and start again with nothing.

If I got ill because of some food served to me by McDonalds, I wouldn't start going back there as soon as they appointed a new store manager, its McDonalds the brand, the entity, that I would have my (pardon the pun) beef with.

So yeah, well done Argyle if you like. After 35 games you are in and around the play-offs of a truly woeful division. Well done. They haven't achieved anything yet, nor is there any indication that they will do so in the coming weeks. It would be interesting to see what would happen if Reid was recalled, I have a pretty strong idea which direction they'd be heading.

[Gullscorer]

Sorry Bengul, but you’re still wrong. The ownership of a ship, club, hotel, McDonalds, or any business, is entirely relevant, even if the name of the business entity remains the same. A brief study of basic business law would teach you that.

Your McDonalds analogy is also erroneous because you are not comparing like with like. The analogy would be more correct if you were to consider McDonalds being in financial trouble and being bought out by a new owner, who cannot be blamed for the faults of the previous one, but that’s not what you did. My hotel analogy is certainly a more accurate one.

You are also incorrect in thinking that I want to ‘act friendly’ with our two Devon footballing neighbours. I certainly bear no grudges against them, but, even if you dislike the clubs and their supporters intensely, the fact remains that we cannot ignore them. They are the only other Football League clubs in Devon.

They are playing, for this season at least, in the same division, and it would be silly not to keep an eye on what they doing and saying and what their current form and positions in the table are. Whatever the reason, Argyle are where they are, and we are not. If only we’d had a Reid playing for us, we might not be where we are now.

I share your anger with regards to the previous Argyle owners. But I fear your attitude towards the club with its current owners is indeed emotional and illogical, for the reasons I have given above.

[PhilGull]

I've always been proud of what I perceived to the the brotherly love (and accompanying sibling rivalry we three Devon clubs share). It makes me laugh when my Villa supporting mate gets so vitriolic about Birmingham or any of the London fans get arsey about the other London clubs.
The amount of players and managers/coaches that have moved around between the three clubs over the years makes any hatred seem silly.

[PhilGull]

I would add that my hospitality does not go so far as to see either of them promoted above us!

[Behind-the-Gulls]

They've been given National Minority Status.