Plymouth Argyle: Season 2 Preparations

Hello friends and welcome back to my Plymouth Argyle Football Manager Story and I‘m happy to bring you all the news from Home Park in the build-up to my second season in charge which will now be in League One following promotion last season. As usual I’ll report on a month by month basis starting of course in May and going through until the pre-season results are complete.

May 2012

Just days after winning the League Two title the work began in assessing the squad, renewing the contracts of those I wanted to keep and preparing to unload a few players as well.

My first player to renew was Simon Walton who signed for £2,700.00 followed by Carl Fletcher for £1,100.00per week. My central midfield had remained in tacked and with a savings of over £5,000.00! Central defender Soukouna received a slight increase which was fair but overall I was delighted with the start.

Towards the end of the month the board provided a cash injection of £140,000 and we negotiated two new sponsorship deals, though would I see any of that money?

Well I got a transfer budget but the salary one was reduced. All those savings made earlier had been wiped out thus ending any hope of re-signing Curtis Nelson who is my best defender by far and only 18 years old. Additionally any contract offers to early “Bosman “ players were restricted to £90.00 a week salary.

Editing the budgets barely gave me £1,000.00 more so I decided to leave things as they were for now and wait for the board meeting to set the seasons expectations. A fat lot of use a transfer budget is when you have no money to pay new players. So annoying!!! We then received another payment of £250,000 for a League 2 solidarity payment.

June 2012

The month started off looking like this in terms of salaries so I was going to have to sit the next 30 days out until some players were released in order to bring in some cheaper ones though delving into my reserves or Under 18’s was looking like an option. Of course loaning players is a given in the lower leagues.

Total Wage Budget: £23,247

Current Wage Budget: £28,340

There were a lot of good player being released by Scottish clubs but there was very little I could do due to board restrictions so I thought another option in accessing players would be to ask for a parent club which after negotiating the board approved.

As anticipated I lost my best young central defender to Sheffield Wednesday but at least made £130,000 on him due to a compensation clause.

Whilst I was suffering in my own misery The Chairman was rubbing his hands together as the club announced a profit for last season.

Finally some good news as the month drew to a close as we announced a link with Liverpool that surely will help in strengthening the squad for the coming season?

With nearly half a million pounds coming in from TV rights I was hoping for some leeway on the salary budget but it wasn’t to be as the season’s expectations were decided. I settled on a mid-table finish – no option really.

The link with Liverpool was proving to be somewhat fruitless as they were either unwilling to let players come to Plymouth or the players themselves didn’t want to come south. In the last few days of June we loaned American Marc Pelosi for the upcoming season from their youth side. Pretty good physical attributes and high team work and can play on either flank — I like that.

Some other good news was Spurs striker Kudus Oyenuga signed up for another season at Home Park which I was delighted about. I’d asked Assistant Manager to compile a loan report on strikers and on the final day of June Bobby Ponton joined us from Hearts. Yes we had to pay £12,000 just to loan him but given this youngster’s profile I thought that was money well spent.

On the final day of the month seven high earning players left the club.

July 2012

All eyes were on the Euro Championships to start off July which Portugal won on penalties beating Iberian neighbor Spain.

At Home Park we picked up midfielder Kaby who was with us last season on a free from Chelsea and the two left backs on the same day. Daniel Redmond who had been released by Wigan and Jeremy Helan arrived from Man City, both of whom should be ideal for my left flank tactic.

Before the first week was over we had brought in another three players all who had been released from their clubs. Daniel Boateng, who arrived from Arsenal to bolster the central defence, Kyle Jacobs from Livingston who will back up Fletcher in midfield and finally William Ekong also a defender and for some reason was let go by Spurs?

That left the salary budget looking like this after releasing players and bringing in the new recruits. I was determined to keep things in control.

Total Wage Budget: £25,036

Current Wage Budget: £20,263

One of the biggest difficulties of the off season was finding a goalkeeper and going into the opening pre season game I just had one. Thankfully Truro who we thrashed 7-0 didn’t cause any need for a spare but the game ended on a sour note as Kaby picked up an injury and will be gone for 5 months. I went into in to my under 18’s for a replacement.

I really wanted to loan a keeper to save on wages but it was so frustrating to find one who would come to Plymouth so in the end I signed Loris Karius but at £750.00 a week this young German was a lot cheaper than Larrieu at £3,000.00 whom we let go in June.

August 2012

I started the month off by loaning Nathan Eccleston from Liverpool for the season in hopes he will emulate Asante’s performances last season who, after several futile attempts refused to come back to Plymouth.

If you remember when I took over the club the financial situation was in terrible shape but just over 12 months later it’s not too bad at all. We still have some loans to pay off in the future  though this ledger does make pleasant reading for now.

Pre-Season Results:

We bookened the summer with two 7-0 wins though in between I feel we could have done a lot better in a couple of those games. We are definitely missing Asante.

Fixtures:

Five games then to kick off the season, two of them against Colchester which should be interesting.

That completes what seems to be a long update so I hope it wasn’t too tough a read but though thansk for dropping by and taking the time.