Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here.
By almost every measure, Plymouth Argyle are a model Football League club. In their latest accounts, the club’s wage to turnover ratio was 66 per cent, the lowest in the Championship.
Their annual losses were £2.4m, almost the lowest in the Championship. The wage bill is the second lowest in the Championship. In a division of financial overstretching, Plymouth are the exception.
The aim is to be entirely financially sustainable – no ifs, no buts – and Argyle believe that they are edging closer to that. That strategy is partly governed by history: it is 14 years since the club went into administration, they had seven straight seasons in the fourth tier and Plymouth were playing League Two football as recently as 2020. History becomes its own mantra.
But more than that it is because sustainability is what owner Simon Hallett demands. He understands that some football club owners are prepared to lose millions of pounds annually in search of a Premier League dream, but that is not him and it will never be Argyle under his watch.
“I’ve never been in debt personally, and so the club I managed wasn’t going to be in that position,” Hallett says.
“I’m a firm believer that you have to build your club to be resilient in almost all circumstances. And if you have debt, you are fragile.
“For us, sustainability is breaking even. I just don’t want to pour my money into foolish holes. Football clubs are pretty sustainable because there’s always someone who is prepared to put their money in to save them.
“Now we’re not going to do it that way, but part of me says that football clubs are more sustainable than people think because there is always going to be someone for whom the ownership of the asset is attractive.”
This has been a difficult season on the pitch in the league for Argyle. They have the second lowest playing budget and they are currently second bottom of the table having survived in the Championship last season. They are favourites to go down.
There is still a chance. The appointment of Wayne Rooney did not work out, but Miron Muslic’s arrival has caused a surge in form – including a phenomenal FA Cup win over Liverpool.
On the evening I spend in Plymouth, they need a win at home to Millwall and score five times. Each goal feels like a shot of adrenaline, an insistence that they can beat the odds to stay up.
There is no reason for Plymouth to fear League One as part of this wider expansion project; they took 101 points in winning the title during their last season in the third tier. But the dream here, as repeatedly stated by Hallett, is to compete in the Championship’s top half regularly.
The top two is realistically out of reach due to budgets inflated by parachute payments, but realise their ambition and Argyle might give themselves a shot at the play-offs. Then, who knows…
Hallett originally joined the board in 2016, increased his shares over time and became the chairman in 2018. In 2019, he bought out shareholder James Brent to become 94 per cent owner. At that point, plans were enacted for significant spending on infrastructure.
“We have done a fantastic job at expanding and diversifying our revenue bases,” Hallett says.
“Although our football budget this season will be amongst the lowest in the Championship, in terms of revenue we will be mid-table – somewhere in the region of £30m.
“That has been a deliberate policy. Football clubs can compete by being smart and they can compete with money. We think we’re pretty smart, but money really helps.
“The stadium is used throughout the week and throughout the year. We have bought other buildings over the last few years that generate revenue. We have bought some land outside the ground that generates revenue.”
Plymouth Argyle 5-1 Millwall (Wednesday 12 February)
- Game no.: 67/92
- Miles: 581
- Cumulative miles: 11,827
- Total goals seen: 198
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: There’s a certain type of noise a crowd makes when the second early goal goes in, a special blend of joy and amused disbelief. Great example of it here: 2-0 after 10 minutes.
The next stage of the project is a £12m investment in Brickfields, a new home for the club’s academy and women’s team. Argyle’s academy teams are successful on the pitch and the coaching structure is high-level, but Hallett describes the infrastructure as “derisory” for a Championship club.
Plymouth’s geographical disadvantages are obvious, but they do present two flipside, positive spins: 1) Clubs are often prepared to send loan players here, far away from the bright lights and with an incentive to focus fully on their own development; 2) There is a vast catchment area for only one league club, if Plymouth can get the infrastructure right to identify, recruit and nurture that potential.
Then, Plymouth can develop the player trading model that is vital for smaller clubs to augment their revenue (and thus their playing budget). You develop your own and you sell them at their peak value. You buy low, you make better and you sell higher.
“We’ve already started this, really,” Hallett says. “Two years ago, we invested £3m in three players. We’ve just sold one of them [Morgan Whittaker] for a fee reported at £6m plus add-ons. So we’ve doubled the value of that player trading pool already.
“In the transfer windows this year, we have gone out and spent seven-figure sums on two players and we have spent six figures on a couple of other players too. So we are building up a portfolio of players. You need that because they’re not all going to work out.”
Those recent transfers represent a leap forward for Argyle. They signed Michael Baidoo and Maksym Talovierov in the January transfer window just ended. Both broke the club’s transfer record in turn, but even then the most expensive only cost around £1.5m.
When you consider that with the spending of some clubs in the division below, you see the point: Plymouth are doing things differently to most around them.
There is also a financial reality that cannot be ignored here. Even with mid-table revenues, increased further since the refurbishment of the new Mayflower grandstand, the determination to be sustainable and the sheer size of the place will always impose limits. Home Park is the third smallest ground in the Championship and the two clubs with lower-capacity stadiums – Oxford United and Luton Town – have firm plans to move.
As such, the answer is for Hallett to seek outside investment. This will involve the issuance of new shares in the first instance, with the potential for the stake to grow as investment does. This allows for club and shareholder to get a handle on each other and for the club to receive investment that can be spent in further improving infrastructure to future-proof the project.
It is also not easy, as Hallett explains. Plymouth’s search for new money has taken longer than he would like (although an announcement may come soon) and he admits significant frustrations along the way.
“We are constantly on the verge,” he says. “We could have everything at the EFL in a few days or it could take a few months. It’s been a very frustrating experience, but we have been absolutely clear with potential investors: we are quite picky.
“We want somebody like me, who understands that this is a business but also a community asset. We want somebody who accepts that, but it’s quite hard to convince someone in business that they should accept sub-par returns to help the club in the city that Simon Hallett grew up in.
“You’re looking for a guardian. Football clubs are not normal investment assets and yet, increasingly, the type of people investing in clubs are normal investment asset guys. I find that a little odd. That sort of thing doesn’t usually end well.”
Plymouth is a professional football club with unique challenges, both for attracting players and for its supporters. Four years ago, I travelled with away fans to and from their game at Sunderland, an 806-mile round trip. It was one of the more remarkable days (and two nights) of my career, but for the Green Army this is life.
The closest away trip this season is a 238-mile trip and that is only if you live in the town centre. For the three friends I met on the Sunderland trip, who live in Camborne in Cornwall, even a home game is 60 slow driving miles each way. It is all very well being a club for the entire south west, but it is a vast area.
Something about that geography creates greater buy-in from players who join. This is a fabulous part of the world that too few people know well, but players and their families tend to fall in love and that can create a bond that the club benefits from. It also creates patience amongst most supporters, according to Hallett.
“Our supporters, by and large, are pretty patient,” he says.
“What differentiates us, under my ownership, is that we try to be as transparent as we possibly can be. We do that because I think that it is the right thing to do to tell people what is happening at their club, but it has won us a lot of patience from the vast majority of fans.
“We took the view that we wanted a secure base of season ticket holders, but also to be able to welcome walk-ups. We want as many supporters as we can get, so if someone wants to come to three or four games a year, they are very welcome. It embeds you in the community more. Plymouth’s population is 265,000 and there’s 750,000 in the area. If we just said that only 17,000 of them can come and watch Argyle then that would be a dreadful thing.”
And something is clearly working. Plymouth have a waiting list of more than five thousand people who want a season ticket. I arrived on an opportune day, both immediately after the Lord Mayor’s show of the Liverpool victory but on a night when Argyle exploded into goalscoring life. The atmosphere in the Mayflower, given the capacity of the place, is as good as I’ve experienced this season.
Internally at Argyle, they call it “building the architecture”. The structure is being put in place for this club to fulfill the vast potential of its location and overcome the disadvantages it also offers. Outside investment will eventually come and nearly every supporter is convinced that it will be used wisely.
The dream remains the same: compete in the Championship’s top half to give yourself a shot of the improbable goal. The self-imposed conditions remain the same too: never spend beyond their means, never take on debt. As such, those last steps will be the hardest because you’re walking in rarefied air and everybody else has bought an expensive oxygen tank on credit.
You leave certain football clubs wishing them well and Plymouth is one. If nothing else, they have created a legacy that will last for decades at a club where, not long ago, nobody knew if they would exist the following week. But they’re aiming for a lot better and bigger than simply redressing the balance of history.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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