Plymouth Argyle: Promoted League One club on the rise after abandoning 'the football way'
- Published
Plymouth Argyle will return to the Championship for the first time since 2010
"I hate it when people say to me: 'That's the way we do it in football.' I tend to run in the opposite direction," says Plymouth Argyle owner Simon Hallett.
The Plymouth-bred United States-based investment millionaire has provided the money to help guide the Pilgrims into the Championship, but done so in a very different way.
And it is a way that has brought them success. Sunday's 3-1 win at Port Vale to clinch the League One title meant Argyle finished above clubs such as Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich Town, Derby County and Portsmouth - all of whom have bigger and better resources.
"We're not like a normal football club where the majority shareholder becomes the chairman and runs the club," Hallett tells BBC Sport while sitting in the front row of the Mayflower Stand at Home Park - a stand that was rebuilt with his funding.
"We're run like a good corporation where I'm the non-executive chairman of the board, set strategy and then Andrew Parkinson, the CEO, and the team execute it, which is just not the football way, and I think that's one reason why we've been successful.
"We are run much more like a normal business, and football is not a normal business, football's a terrible business."
A decade of change
Simon Hallett (right) took over as Plymouth Argyle's majority shareholder from James Brent (left) in 2018
It is a "terrible business" that many love, and one that would be a lot worse off in Plymouth if it were not for Hallett and his predecessor, James Brent.
Brent took over the club after it had gone into administration in 2011 and kept it alive.
A decade and a day before the Pilgrims won promotion to the Championship last month, they stayed up in League Two by a point thanks to losses for Barnet and Dagenham & Redbridge - Argyle themselves lost 1-0 at Rochdale having gone down to 10 men.
"I was sitting there seeing fellow fans who've followed Argyle throughout their whole lives, 40, 50 years, with tears in their eyes thinking 'this is the moment we go out of the Football League'," Chris Webb tells BBC Sport.
"Now you saw those same people at Home Park last weekend with tears of joy in their eyes."
Webb was chairman of the Plymouth Argyle Fans' Trust during their darkest times as administration bit and he helped bring businessman Brent to the club - an investment decision that set the Pilgrims on the path to the Championship in 2023.
"Let's be crystal clear: no James Brent, no Plymouth Argyle Football Club," says Webb, who would later be appointed club president.
"What he was always honest about was he felt he could get us to a position that was sustainable and get us away from the foot of the Football League, and if an owner came along with more resources then he would hand over the baton, and that's exactly what James did.
"Simon's come in and has that bit more access to an injection of cash and wants to run with the club in the same sense of stability, but can take it to the next level. But he's been honest as well and said there may come a time where he has to hand the baton over."
'It's not how much you spend, it's how smart you spend it'
Steven Schumacher had never been a first-team manager before taking over from Ryan Lowe in 2021
How can a club like Plymouth Argyle - who had a wage bill of about £6m last season - hope to compete in the Championship when the average wage bill is £32m and clubs relegated from the Premier League can spend multiples of that?
"There's no reason why clubs who have come up from League One can't compete," Kieran Maguire, a football finance expert from the University of Liverpool, tells BBC Radio Devon.
"We've seen the likes of Luton, Coventry, Millwall, all of whom are clubs that I would say have a broadly similar fanbase, if not slightly smaller in some circumstances, to that of Plymouth, and those clubs have been competing for play-off places this season.
"It's not how much you spend, it's how smart you spend it when it comes to a club such as Plymouth."
And smart spending seems to be written in the Home Park DNA.
Hallett, who first joined the club's board in 2016 and became majority owner two years later, has focused on infrastructure spending to make Plymouth sustainable.
The new Mayflower Stand has been followed by plans for a new training ground and academy, thanks also to new investment he has brought in from the United States.
Hallett says it all comes down to the focus of Argyle as a business, rather than as a football club.
"We've been very clear that we weren't going to compete by spending more, we were going to compete by being smarter about how we spent that money," he says.
"That's really where the increased revenue has gone over the last couple of years. It's gone in a really high-quality coaching team - let's not forget the team behind the first-team squad is really outstanding now.
"We've got a head of football data that we didn't have before. He's got a team working with him. Our recruitment is based on data and not gut feel.
"When I got involved, I said: 'I don't know anything about football, but I do know about decision-making.' That's been my thing for the last 25 years and the only thing I insist on here is we get more proficient on using data and analytics.
"There's no magic in data, it's just the basis for your decision-making. I think being much more process-oriented, more careful about how we make decisions here, has been part of the success.
"We've not spent more than most of the teams in League One, yet here we are at the top, so we have been smarter about how we've spent the money, and I think we can continue to do that in the Championship.
"To my mind the crazy amounts of money that people are prepared to lose for a shot at the Premier League suggests that there are clubs that are making decisions differently from us, so I think we'll be able to compete with them. That's always been the goal."
Argyle fans will hope their players can give them many more memories in the Championship
It is a process that appears to have worked so far.
When Argyle manager Steven Schumacher first came to the club as assistant to then boss Ryan Lowe, the Pilgrims had a five-year plan to reach the Championship from League Two. They have done it in four.
When Lowe left for Preston in late 2021, Schumacher was appointed in his place - a decision made by the board based on data, and doing things differently. Schumacher had never had a game as a first-team manager.
But it is a decision that has paid off. Having missed out on the play-offs on the final day of last season, Argyle have achieved their objective while Schumacher has been named the League One Manager of the Year.
"We've proved this year that we can punch above our weight, so that'll be the aim," Schumacher tells BBC Sport about constructing a side for the Championship.
"We know what we're going to have compared to everybody else, it'll be nothing near.
"But it's been like that in League One as well for the last two years and I think we've managed to do all right, so I'm sure we'll figure a way out if we can."
With the likes of Schumacher's boyhood club and footballing love Everton, 2016 Premier League champions Leicester City, Leeds United, Nottingham Forest and Southampton all staring at the possibility of relegation to the Championship, those predicting the 2023-24 table could be forgiven for not giving Plymouth much of a hope.
But those inside the club know their different way of doing things may just be the secret to seeing the Pilgrims survive and thrive in the second tier.