Simon Hallett's Ankura podcast highlights reel, and Loan FC is BACK!

Hallett talks budget, the Championship, and out-thinking not out-spending

Welcome to Ep.5 of One Team in Devon – the weekly-ish Argyle fanzine.

We delayed this episode last week because of a flurry of news around the signing of Julio Pleguezuelo – and the release of the 23/24 fixture list. So we fully accept that part of this newsletter may feel a tad dated, but hopefully no less interesting.

This week, the Argyle faithful has been made to wait for further signings, as the recruitment team works through their long shopping list.

But after a week of #pafc Twitter detective work we got word that exciting youth wing back Kaine Kesler-Hayden had signed on a season-long loan from Villa. We’ve done a bit of research on him – which you can read below.

However, this week’s main course is an EFL on Quest-quality highlights package of Simon Hallett’s appearance on The Ankura Podcast back in early June. The business-focused pod discussed Hallett’s time with Argyle, with detail about many of the changes he made.

A lot of the stuff wasn’t new. But we’ve picked out some of Simon’s interesting comments from a fan perspective.

COYG.

Kaine Kesler-Hayden signs

Loan FC is back in business. Argyle’s second #incoming of the summer is Kaine Kesler-Hayden, a season-long loan from Aston Villa – and there’s a lot to like about this signing.

Playing in the RWB position, it’s pretty obvious that Joe Edwards (who is 33 in October) will struggle with the demands of playing wing back in the Championship week-in-week-out, and Kesler-Hayden’s pace and skill would be a great foil for his experience.

There are plenty of impressive Kesler-Hayden highlights reels (one below), and they probably say more about him that a bunch of xG or dribbling stats. He loves to get on the ball, has bags of skill and energy – but certainly isn’t the finished article.

For a 20-year-old, he’s already bagged plenty of first-team experience. He was the young player of the year at Swindon in L2, despite playing just half a season before switching to MK Dons – and he was part of the starting XI that thrashed Argyle so painfully at Home Park on the last day of the 21/22 season.

Watch Kesler-Hayden’s highlights in Swindon v Man City. Yes, that’s him roasting Gabriel Jesus.

But Kesler-Hayden also got 15 games for Huddersfield Town last season – in a loan spell that didn’t quite fire. He was recalled in January, with a handful of starts and substitute appearances, as The Terriers struggled in the early season.

A scan of the Aston Villa reaction to Kaine Kesler-Hayden’s loan suggests plenty of admiration for him, but a clear message that this needs to be a big season for him to make the step up to the Villa squad.

Welcome Kaine.

Word on Pleggy

We got a quick word on Pleggy from Michael Bell editor of @ootballoranje_ and Eridivisie expert. And he had this to say about Argyle’s new CB:

I think it is a very good signing for Argyle. Has been a reliable centre-back for Twente over the past few seasons. Not the strongest in the air, but he is positionally aware and good on the ball. Did lose his place in the Twente defence at times this season, but was key towards the end of the campaign as they got a European spot.

I’ve seen some people surprised that he is leaving Twente, but this is a good step for him. Twente play attacking football and his ability on the ball was key to their build-up. If Argyle like possession-based attacking football [yes we do Michael - ed] then he can do well.

6 interesting comments from Simon Hallett on The Ankura Podcast

1. Schuey’s role…and how ‘football’ is just another department

“Football is another department at the club. We have a director of football to whom the manager reports. Our manager is very much a coach, not an Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger style manager, having his fingers over marketing and so on.

“Our director of football is responsible for the Academy and recruitment. And he's responsible for results on the pitch, via the manager, who reports to him. We look upon football as another department making claims on our resources, and another department with governance structures that are appropriate for a well-run company.”

2. The Argyle vision – and the club accepting mediocrity

“The board did three things back in 2018. First of all, we set out what our vision was, and our vision sounded rather dull, but it was to ‘be a successful football team supported or respected by everyone in the southwest and many beyond.’

“We weren't a successful football club. As you say we were on the way to relegation to the lowest division of the Football League. We weren't a successful football club measured by results on the pitch. We weren't a successful organisation measured by the losses we were making, nor by the culture at the club, which really was accepting mediocrity, that was enforced by having very scarce resources.”

3. Outthink, not outspend

“We did think that under my ownership, we could raise the level of revenues at the club, as a strategic objective, and divert some of those resources to the football department, combined with investment in backroom staff, coaching staff, and a data analytics team.

“We thought we could do more with the football resources that we had available. We were planning to outsmart the competition, not outspend them.”

4. Outperforming the budget

“Our budget for football put us roughly 10th in League One last year, and below that the previous year. Yet we ended up in seventh place, then first place. So we've outperformed our budget by seven or eight league places a year.”

5. Surviving in the Championship

“We faced the problem [of big spending rivals] in League One. So it's the same problem in the Championship, but it's much worse. The average Championship club loses £500,000 a week or £25 million a year. We’re going to break even."

“We’re going to break even by spending whatever our revenues can generate, so our revenues go up, and those increased revenues will almost entirely go into the first team. But it's not going to leave us not 10^th, but lower in the Championship in terms of spend.

“That only matters because there's a correlation between what you spend and the results you get. But it's not a perfect correlation. And actually, in the Championship, arguably, there's much more irrationality, and poor decision-making about spending than in League One.

“We’ve got a really good coaching staff. We've got a superb first-team manager, we've got a really good structure behind him. I think we can continue to outperform our budget, and that gives us a very good chance of staying in the Championship.”

6. Argyle Green and putting more money into the club

These comments came before news that Argyle Green shareholder Rudy Cline-Thomas would be gifting his shares back to the club, in order to take up a director role at Leeds United. However, Cline-Thomas is just one of a large number of shareholders at Argyle Green, so there’s no suggestion this is too much of a negative for Argyle at this stage, although it’s a shame to lose a clearly wealthy and influential backer.

“Argyle Green is a partnership amongst a bunch of American investors. They only have 20%. It's very much ‘we'll get to know you and see how it goes.’

“I don't expect it to stay at 20% forever, it could go down could go up frankly, and I have kind of come to the realisation that probably I will end up putting more money in as well.

“But they are helping me finance these extraordinary infrastructure projects that will be beneficial to the club over a generation.”