Forest V Blackpool today

[Chris Dennis]

Holloway is one hell of a manager. A remarkable achievement and while we will all feel "it could have been us" we shouldn't take anything away from what he's done there.

To think, we were sixth in the championship under Ollie, the same position Blackpool got to this season. But while we went on a downward spiral signing Scottish wastes of space like Gow and McLean, Holloway went to Rangers and bought Adams who has scored nearly 20 goals this season. He cost half a million so these players are out there - you just need a manager who can find them and bring out the best in them.

Good luck to the guy, he really knows his stuff. Him and Pulis, two remarkable managers who couldn't work with our board and moved on after being frustrated by the attitudes and obstacles faced down here.

It's not easy being an Argyle fan on nights like this.

Pulis and Holloway both moved on to clubs with much more money behind them they worked well with our board whilst they were at the club as results bear out.

Being 6th after 15 games is a lot different to being 6th after 46 games. There is no way we could match what Wolves, Ipswich, Everton and QPR were offering our players all with many millions more than us - to replace them with the same quality proved beyond us when fairly ordinary CCC players were demanding £15K a week. How would we have raised the cash to maintain a challenge? There is not so much silly money around now so easier for Blackpool to hold onto their players. Is Adam out of contract at the end of the season? If not they can hold on to him and get even more if he continues to shine.

 

[pilgrim_pete]

1. Cardiff must be stopped at any cost!

2. Blackpool, if they go up, will get destroyed next season.

 

[Greenskin]

Holloway is one hell of a manager. A remarkable achievement and while we will all feel "it could have been us" we shouldn't take anything away from what he's done there.

To think, we were sixth in the championship under Ollie, the same position Blackpool got to this season. But while we went on a downward spiral signing Scottish wastes of space like Gow and McLean, Holloway went to Rangers and bought Adams who has scored nearly 20 goals this season. He cost half a million so these players are out there - you just need a manager who can find them and bring out the best in them.

Good luck to the guy, he really knows his stuff. Him and Pulis, two remarkable managers who couldn't work with our board and moved on after being frustrated by the attitudes and obstacles faced down here.

It's not easy being an Argyle fan on nights like this.

Pulis and Holloway both moved on to clubs with much more money behind them they worked well with our board whilst they were at the club as results bear out.

Being 6th after 15 games is a lot different to being 6th after 46 games. There is no way we could match what Wolves, Ipswich, Everton and QPR were offering our players all with many millions more than us - to replace them with the same quality proved beyond us when fairly ordinary CCC players were demanding £15K a week. How would we have raised the cash to maintain a challenge? There is not so much silly money around now so easier for Blackpool to hold onto their players. Is Adam out of contract at the end of the season? If not they can hold on to him and get even more if he continues to shine.

Totally misses the point as usual.Those players were under contract until the next summer at the very earliest and the only one who definitely had to be transferred was SEB,Therefore,if the board hadn't made the decision to sell,for whatever reason,those players would not have needed to be replaced,would they? And your view certainly doesn't tally with that of Stapes,who,in an interview in the Indy a few weeks ago,said that if Holloway had stayed,Penrice would have been able to replace the departing players easily.We finished 7 points off the play offs that season and with those players stlll on the books and a decent replacement for SEB,the play offs at least would have been made comfortably.Just face up to the facts instead of putting forward indefensible defence mechanisms all the time-Blackpool have shown more bottle in the last 6 months than the Argyle board have produced in 90 years and hopefully will get their reward.At least if they don't,they'll have had a bleddy good try,which is more than can be said for the faint hearted,submissive and outclassed people who have run our club for its entire history.

 

[Chris Dennis]

Holloway is one hell of a manager. A remarkable achievement and while we will all feel "it could have been us" we shouldn't take anything away from what he's done there.

To think, we were sixth in the championship under Ollie, the same position Blackpool got to this season. But while we went on a downward spiral signing Scottish wastes of space like Gow and McLean, Holloway went to Rangers and bought Adams who has scored nearly 20 goals this season. He cost half a million so these players are out there - you just need a manager who can find them and bring out the best in them.

Good luck to the guy, he really knows his stuff. Him and Pulis, two remarkable managers who couldn't work with our board and moved on after being frustrated by the attitudes and obstacles faced down here.

It's not easy being an Argyle fan on nights like this.

Pulis and Holloway both moved on to clubs with much more money behind them they worked well with our board whilst they were at the club as results bear out.

Being 6th after 15 games is a lot different to being 6th after 46 games. There is no way we could match what Wolves, Ipswich, Everton and QPR were offering our players all with many millions more than us - to replace them with the same quality proved beyond us when fairly ordinary CCC players were demanding £15K a week. How would we have raised the cash to maintain a challenge? There is not so much silly money around now so easier for Blackpool to hold onto their players. Is Adam out of contract at the end of the season? If not they can hold on to him and get even more if he continues to shine.

Totally misses the point as usual.Those players were under contract until the next summer at the very earliest and the only one who definitely had to be transferred was SEB,Therefore,if the board hadn't made the decision to sell,for whatever reason,those players would not have needed to be replaced,would they? And your view certainly doesn't tally with that of Stapes,who,in an interview in the Indy a few weeks ago,said that if Holloway had stayed,Penrice would have been able to replace the departing players easily.We finished 7 points off the play offs that season and with those players stlll on the books and a decent replacement for SEB,the play offs at least would have been made comfortably.Just face up to the facts instead of putting forward indefensible defence mechanisms all the time-Blackpool have shown more bottle in the last 6 months than the Argyle board have produced in 90 years and hopefully will get their reward.At least if they don't,they'll have had a bleddy good try,which is more than can be said for the faint hearted,submissive and outclassed people who have run our club for its entire history.

Its a game of opinions and I don't agree with those. I don't think we had a good enough squad to maintain a play-off challenge even if all those players had stayed. We hadn't even played everyone once when Olly left and much harder tests were still to come. Gosling, Akos and Norris were set on leaving well before Holloway left and there is no way we could have stopped them leaving. If Holloway had stayed and had been able to replace them with the same quality we might have made the play-offs but it is pure conjecture to say we would have made it comfortably. Just being in the top six after a few games doesn't mean anything or even for most of the season like Swansea this year The big mistake was not to have a fair and open competition for the position of new manager rather than just give it to the chairman's mate.

When Holloway left after 14 games our record was W 5 D 5 L 4 Pts 20

After 14 games with Blackpool this year the record was W 6 D 5 L 3 Pts 23

Blackpool scraped into the play-offs on the last day because Swansea failed to beat Doncaster - they didn't make it comfortably and could easily have missed out with a better start over 14 games than we had under Holloway. We would have to have taken a huge gamble putting the future of the club at risk to get the millions extra we needed just to have a chance of making the play-offs. There is an argument that if you can't beat them join them so maybe we should have got ourselves 30M in debt like Cardiff and Palace as the worst that could have happened was ending up where we are now in L1. As Gordon Taylor says clubs are using the administration rules as a strategy and a get out clause - our owners at the time weren't prepared to play that game.

 

[Greenskin]

Holloway is one hell of a manager. A remarkable achievement and while we will all feel "it could have been us" we shouldn't take anything away from what he's done there.

To think, we were sixth in the championship under Ollie, the same position Blackpool got to this season. But while we went on a downward spiral signing Scottish wastes of space like Gow and McLean, Holloway went to Rangers and bought Adams who has scored nearly 20 goals this season. He cost half a million so these players are out there - you just need a manager who can find them and bring out the best in them.

Good luck to the guy, he really knows his stuff. Him and Pulis, two remarkable managers who couldn't work with our board and moved on after being frustrated by the attitudes and obstacles faced down here.

It's not easy being an Argyle fan on nights like this.

Pulis and Holloway both moved on to clubs with much more money behind them they worked well with our board whilst they were at the club as results bear out.

Being 6th after 15 games is a lot different to being 6th after 46 games. There is no way we could match what Wolves, Ipswich, Everton and QPR were offering our players all with many millions more than us - to replace them with the same quality proved beyond us when fairly ordinary CCC players were demanding £15K a week. How would we have raised the cash to maintain a challenge? There is not so much silly money around now so easier for Blackpool to hold onto their players. Is Adam out of contract at the end of the season? If not they can hold on to him and get even more if he continues to shine.

Totally misses the point as usual.Those players were under contract until the next summer at the very earliest and the only one who definitely had to be transferred was SEB,Therefore,if the board hadn't made the decision to sell,for whatever reason,those players would not have needed to be replaced,would they? And your view certainly doesn't tally with that of Stapes,who,in an interview in the Indy a few weeks ago,said that if Holloway had stayed,Penrice would have been able to replace the departing players easily.We finished 7 points off the play offs that season and with those players stlll on the books and a decent replacement for SEB,the play offs at least would have been made comfortably.Just face up to the facts instead of putting forward indefensible defence mechanisms all the time-Blackpool have shown more bottle in the last 6 months than the Argyle board have produced in 90 years and hopefully will get their reward.At least if they don't,they'll have had a bleddy good try,which is more than can be said for the faint hearted,submissive and outclassed people who have run our club for its entire history.

Its a game of opinions and I don't agree with those. I don't think we had a good enough squad to maintain a play-off challenge even if all those players had stayed. We hadn't even played everyone once when Olly left and much harder tests were still to come. Gosling, Akos and Norris were set on leaving well before Holloway left and there is no way we could have stopped them leaving. If Holloway had stayed and had been able to replace them with the same quality we might have made the play-offs but it is pure conjecture to say we would have made it comfortably. Just being in the top six after a few games doesn't mean anything or even for most of the season like Swansea this year The big mistake was not to have a fair and open competition for the position of new manager rather than just give it to the chairman's mate.

When Holloway left after 14 games our record was W 5 D 5 L 4 Pts 20

After 14 games with Blackpool this year the record was W 6 D 5 L 3 Pts 23

Blackpool scraped into the play-offs on the last day because Swansea failed to beat Doncaster - they didn't make it comfortably and could easily have missed out with a better start over 14 games than we had under Holloway. We would have to have taken a huge gamble putting the future of the club at risk to get the millions extra we needed just to have a chance of making the play-offs. There is an argument that if you can't beat them join them so maybe we should have got ourselves 30M in debt like Cardiff and Palace as the worst that could have happened was ending up where we are now in L1. As Gordon Taylor says clubs are using the administration rules as a strategy and a get out clause - our owners at the time weren't prepared to play that game.

The club was never in any danger of going into administration and nobody was saying that Argyle should have run up a debt of £30m like Palace or Cardiff.Your assertion that Argyle could do nothing to keep the players named is incorrect IMHO.They were under contract and if Argyle had said no to them moving,it would not have been in their best interests to give of less than their best for the rest of the season-why would they destroy the chance of a potential premiership career? If Argyle had missed out,there would have been the chance to cash in in the summer of 2008 and any losses [of which it's doubtful there would have been any] offset then.Thats all myself and others were asking for,just to try,not a lunatic spending spree a la Pompey or whoever.

Just a little correction-Holloway left after 16 games and the record was P 16 W 6 D 6 L4 Pts 24.As you say though,that is irrelevant-the important factor was momentum and there was no question,after a superb performance against Norwich [rather similar to some of the football played by Blackpool last night] that Argyle had that and i believe that would have been maintained.If Gosling,Buzz and Norris [and a good replacement for SEB] couldn't have helped the team to get an extra few points over the remainder of that season,then i'm the British open golf champion.Going the other way hasn't exactly been healthy either,has it? Relegation,losing money hand over fist anyway,not my idea of good club directorship.Still, always the derby to look forward to next season.

 

[Chris Dennis]

I stand corrected W6 D6 L4 as against Blackpool W7 D6 L3 after 16 games.

Akos was told he could leave by Holloway and it was now or never for Gosling to Everton so it was only really Norris that could have been persuaded to stay - selling him was actually good business if we could have got a decent replacement as most people were happy with the money we got for him at the time.

 

[exmouthgrecian]

It is interesting that many of you have changed your view of Holloway somewhat.

I like the guy (even when he was with you lot ) and his jibe about painting the Lighthouse green and white was a classic.

Good luck to him as he seems to have got Blackpool playing some decent stuff.

Interesting comment about Alan Ball. He is remembered fondly by most Grecians as he engineered a double against you in 1984/85.

Looking forward to next season. I see you might be selling Mackie to CP for about 500K. I presume cash must be tight as I have always read that most supporters think he is worth more than that.