Chairman's Chat - The Greens are Going Up!

It’s just beginning to sink in, after the weekend’s celebrations. 

I am, of course, immensely proud of everyone involved - and that’s a large number.

In the last few years, we’ve worked hard to become a values-driven club, which implies that everyone agrees on our values, and everyone lives them every day. That means that when we achieve our goals, we achieve them together. 

A little over four years ago, our board agreed on a vision and stated our mission—to become a sustainable Sky Bet Championship club. The board identified several areas, consistent with our values, that it asked our staff to focus on.

Under Andrew Parkinson’s outstanding leadership, the staff have delivered, the club is better run and financially stronger than it has ever been. What we offer our fans has improved almost beyond recognition.

We play attractive football in attractive surroundings and treat our supporters with the respect they deserve by being as open and transparent as we possibly can be.

The Green Army has responded magnificently. Home Park has been sold out on match days; our hospitality facilities are full; our retail store is busier by far than it has ever been and take up of our Evergreen membership scheme has been terrific. I thank you so much for everything you have done to help make this a successful season for our first team.

It doesn’t stop with the football season, of course! Home Park is a place at the heart of the city all year round and will continue being available during the post-season as a venue for conferences, banquets, and concerts, while also, of course, still being let to the NHS as a vaccination centre.

Beyond the Club, our Community Trust continues to do the great work it has always done, but has received more widespread recognition. The success of Project 35, where the Trust worked so successfully with our partners at Ginsters, has led to Argyle being named Community Club of the Year in League One. I’m as proud of that and the team behind that award as I am of leading our division.

This success, and this support from our fans, have not gone unnoticed by the business community and by our sponsors. The financial support they bring the club continues to grow and I’m delighted that we were able to announce major new partnerships with companies such as Kawasaki, Portcullis Legals, Babcock and Princess Yachts this season. Our partnership with Ginsters will continue, and we were delighted to announce that Bond Timber will be back on our shirts (in the Championship!) next season.

We have also announced one of our biggest shorts sponsorships, with Retain Limited. We are very grateful to all our sponsors, whose support has been such a big part of our success.

Our first-team squad has shown the same commitment to the relationship with fans as the rest of the Club. Scenes of celebration on the Barbican on Saturday night were remarkable evidence that this is a squad that embraces its supporters, and not just at Home Park on match day.

One of the most memorable things for me on Saturday was seeing one of our star players break off from celebrating, to talk to a six-year-old girl. He is her favourite player, and she wanted to invite him for a Chinese meal!

I have to put on my record my huge congratulations to our manager, Steven Schumacher, for everything he has done on the field for us to be in the position we are now in. I think he is just wonderful. I am not just impressed with him tactically and with how he motivates players, but I like that he empowers his team to believe in themselves, and is not afraid to take risks.

My favourite moment of the season was seeing us 2-1 up against Ipswich Town, our biggest divisional rivals, live on television, with 20 minutes to go – and Schuey put on 18-year-old Will Jenkins Davies. What an endorsement of a player, and what a superb piece of man-management to instill that belief into a teenage prospect. 

We must remember that Schuey himself is still a young man, a young manager, and is still developing. One of the reasons he is already very good at what he does is his openness to learning his craft. I notice how often our players remark of their game plan going into matches, which is evidence of Schuey’s diligence and depth of thought. I am hugely grateful that he is our manager. 

Culture is critical and I think it’s been particularly so this season with the introduction of five substitutes being permitted in a match. Managers can now change nearly half their players, meaning that the team that starts is rarely the team that finishes.

Football culture, where squad members compete for match day appearances has had to be overturned, and Schuey and his staff have managed the delicate issue of squad rotation superbly so that the unity shown by the squad has been a key part of its success.

Everyone shares responsibility for this promotion – our board that laid down a vision, the staff for executing the plan, our football team for forming a strong team spirit and doing the job on the pitch, and our fans and sponsors for providing the resources to enable us to get to where we are today.

But where will we be in the future? The Championship is a wild and woolly place where teams with huge resources compete for the prize of playing in the Premier League. It is possible that an independent regulator will help curb the vast losses that so many Championship clubs incur, but we will not wait for financial sustainability to be legislated. We will pursue it without being told to do so.

We share the dream of playing in the Premier League, but our approach to getting there will not change. 

We are now a Championship club, but our goal is to be a sustainable one. That means that our expenses must match our revenues (they would have done so this season, but for promotion and the contingent payments that promotion triggers - payments that are well covered by cash reserves). 

We will continue to compete by being smarter with our resources, a strategy that has been so successful over the last couple of seasons. 

We will also continue to invest in infrastructure, to help our fans and our football teams. We have announced the purchase of Goals—now Harpers—which will eventually be the site of a first-team training facility and, in the interim, provide significant cash flows. 

We have also announced that we will be part of a group, along with Plymouth Albion, Plymouth City Council and the Argyle Community Trust, that will embark on major investment in the Brickfields site in Devonport. When complete, it will provide facilities for the community and a permanent home for our Academy and Women’s teams. That, in turn, will enable us better to compete for the talented local footballers we will need to come through the Academy to the first team.

We will be relying on the continuing support of the Green Army and our sponsors to provide the resources we need. We will shortly announce season-ticket pricing for the coming Championship season. We recognise that times are hard, as sluggish economic growth and high levels of inflation are squeezing everyone’s disposable income. Our costs are also rising rapidly, and the quality of what we provide our fans has risen, so we think the modest price increases we will ask you to support still represent exceptional value for money.

So how will we compete? The same way we have competed in recent seasons, by being smarter with our money than our competitors. Our investments in people and our investments in data analytic resources have led to us competing successfully by helping us make better decisions. 

Although transferring this approach to the Championship will be harder than it has been in League One, we have an amazing opportunity and a brilliant young manager ready to go!

Competing in one of the most popular and watched leagues in world football is incredibly exciting for everyone involved in Plymouth Argyle, and whilst we will enter next season doing things our way, there is no reason, as we have done this year, why we cannot hold account of ourselves in the second tier.

We’ve got this far by pulling together as a club, as a fan base, as a community and as a football team.

We will only achieve our goals by continuing to do so. It’s been easy to pull together while we’ve been winning. It might not be so easy next year, but boy are we going to give it a go. 

In the meantime, let’s hope we can celebrate again after Sunday’s match at Port Vale! Promotion was the goal, but winning the League One title would be a remarkable achievement, especially this year, given the strength of the clubs who have spent most of the season chasing us.

It’s going to be a busy summer at your club.

We’ll let you know what’s been going on as soon as we can. Enjoy the celebrations!

COYG!

S