Simon Hallett: Leading The Way
In five years of ownership, Simon Hallett has progressed the club from the lower reaches of the EFL to one that can thrive in the Championship
Cast your mind back to Easter: the task to stay up after sacking Foster felt herculean as the reality of Argyle’s position really started to kick in. Maybe it’s hard to get back in that mindset, now safety is secured and rumours are swirling about who the next manager will be, but roll back just a few weeks and nerves were shredded. There was a real fear that we were going to throw away a place in the Championship next season that we overall deserved.
Here’s the thing: based on the season as a whole, Argyle did not deserve to be relegated. We built a good team that played great attacking football (let’s not mention some of the defending) and up until Valentine’s Day, nobody could realistically predict that we’d become embroiled in a relegation scrap.
In fact, Argyle had performed so well throughout the season that even after picking up four points from 27 and seeing Ian Foster deservedly sacked, Argyle had accumulated enough points (including goal difference) with half a dozen games to go to keep themselves in the division in six the past twelve seasons. Just our luck then that for only the fifth time this century, 50 points were required to achieve Championship safety on the back of those record high points totals for the League One play-offs and automatic promotion in the previous seasons.
All of which puts into perspective how incredibly far the club has come under Simon Hallett. Storming the pitch after dispatching Hull was not only a celebration of success in this our first season back in the second tier, but of long-term success in such a short period of time.
From a yo-yo club to a growing club
Make no mistake, when Simon Hallett became the majority owner of Plymouth Argyle, we were not ready for the Championship. Not even close.
Under James Brent, the club had finally emerged from the administration maelstrom and managed to stabilise the finances by 2015. With Home Park attendances climbing to around 10,000 and thus income to about £6m, Argyle settled into a position as a club straddling League Two and League One with a budget to match. Between 2015 and 2021, Argyle finished in either the top third of the basement division or the bottom third of the third tier, with only that incredible performance during the second half of 2017/18 bucking the trend.
That’s what we were until very, very recently. As in, three years ago. We were a club that was simply aiming to become a regular fixture in League One with half an eye on a play-off place, graduating from one that had become a lower-league yo-yo club.