Second bid for Hourihane rejected..

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Bar...yle-captain/story-21269881-detail/story.html?

 

I wonder whether a similar scenario to the one seven years ago with Southend & JCR is being played out? All our bids were turned down that Summer, until the last day of the transfer window. The player then told his club he wished to join us and they then had to accept a fee quite a bit lower than previous bids, as he was in the final year of his contract.
Pure speculation on my part.

 

Ben's gonna have to break the notes out.

 

I'll try finding the link to a 10 page thread on the Plymouth forum. Makes for interesting reading, regards the lad and his ability etc, as well as giving an insight into how we're perceived by other clubs. Rumour on there of our first bid being just £20,000.

Linky: http://www.pasoti.co.uk/talk/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=84238

 

Offer increased by a fiver?

 

I don't know the figures Barnsley would normally pay for a player, but this lad is special and it would take a very large offer (Large for a league 2 player anyway) for us to part with him, also, even if we do accept would he go to you? he reportedly turned down Yeovil and Birmingham last season when he was out of contract to rejoin us

 

We've put in a new bid of 200k....

Should be enough.

 

What's your financial situation at the moment? I know things are better than they were but is it still precarious?

By the way, I'm sure you're a decent lad but there's some right berks on your forum.

 

We know the feeling

 

We do.

 

Have you ever thought about the Diplomatic Service as a career option?

 

No.

 

LOL... probably just as well...

 

We're not doing too badly financially at the moment i don't think, we are though still paying off the debts from administration when we were given 5 years to pay it all off, i'm not 100% how that's going but i feel reasonably confident we'll pay it all by then.
And i can agree about the people on our forum, generally i'd say most of them are decent but there are a few odd ones about. As for the sideways step comments though i'm not sure they were meant to be offensive to Barnsley, but a lot of our fans are very optimistic we'll go up this season, and i don't know how your fans feel but i've not seen too many people predicting Barnsley to go up, so what they're saying is we'll probably be in the same league when his contract runs out, we also seem to have a lot of fans with a "big club mentality" like Sheffield Wednesday as someone else has pointed out, but this is probably because not so long ago we were playing in the Championship for 6(i think) seasons and finished not too far off the play-offs a couple of seasons before we went down, and now we're playing Accrington Stanley, Burton Albion and Morecambe and in some cases almost doubling attendances when they only take 200 maximum (but most take a lot less) to Plymouth so that's to be expected really. I'm not sure what it is, but Barnsley from the outside don't seem that big a club, i'd say you're actually rather similar to us but you're a little bit bigger but if you mention Barnsley as a reasonably big club to most people they'd probably laugh it off, i'm not really sure why. Either way, i can understand where are fans are coming from even if they are a little bit off in what they say.

 

We're not a big club, mate. We're not a small club either. But you're right, from the outside, neutrals, they usually see us as a small club. It doesn't annoy me personally, I can see why people think like that. We're a small northern town, the butt of many a joke in the media etc. We don't attract huge crowds. We barely keep a good player for more than a season. It's safe to say we're probably (in present times) a top ten third tier outfit. But what people don't realise is that we're historically a mid table second tier outfit, who've won and lost FA Cup finals, won and lost playoff finals, visited Wembley old and new in huge games, and played in the top flight where in most seasons our points total would have seen us safe. We've a solid 7,000 or so diehard supporters, but we've had little trouble in attracting three times that figure given the right circumstances. We're never going to be a big club. But we believe that we can once more prosper as a solid second tier outfit who enjoy the odd cup run and tilt at promotion. That's the goal I would suggest.


Do I think Plymouth are on a par with us? No. Not at present, and not historically. It would take even a diehard Pilgrim just one minute to look at both clubs objectively and conclude that. But does that matter? No. But there's scope for an Argyle, a Bristol City to be a big club in English football. Big places, potentially big fanbase etc, in a decent area of the country. But then, you've been around 128 years (a year longer than we have) and never fulfilled that potential, so...?


If Conor decides to join us he'll be making a step up. Not just in terms of division, but in the coaching we can offer him, the platform too. We not too long ago produced the future England captain in John Stones. The likes of Jacob Butterfield, Kieran Trippier, Danny Drinkwater, and Ricardo Vaz Te all came here a couple of years ago without repute and have gone on to better things. So it's a no brainer really. And if we're publicly pursuing him, I'd imagine we know already that he wants the move.


Good luck to Argyle though. I have fond memories of a visit there a few years ago when we stayed up. I was also lucky enough not to be at Home Park the day we were coasting to a 4-1 victory before the rain/referee intervened...

 

Good to hear things are turning round for you.

I would never describe us as a big club but if we made a decent fist of it in the championship I could see us getting gates of 15 to 16,000 and more if we made a realistic challenge. That's pie in the sky at the moment but I expect us to average around 10,000 next season which is not too bad at that level. A big difference between Barnsley and Plymouth is the number of clubs in close proximity. Yorkshire is a hotbed of football whereas Devon and Cornwall aren't. There are only four towns/cities in South Yorkshire, yet we have five league clubs.

I was surprised by how quickly your gates have dropped since your relegations. I think if we dropped to the bottom tier, which is something our board are working towards, I don't think our gates would drop much lower than they will be this coming season. At the minute Plymouth to Barnsley is a step up. No doubt about it. The thing is, if this lad is as good as people think he is he might be looking at making a bigger step.

 

I'd press my like button if I had one.....Got to laugh at that...

 

Ours was about 10k in League 1 (Turns out it was only 8k) and then with the administration and liquidation looking over us i think some just gave up, we shot straight down to about 6k in our first season in League 2 but then i suppose the fact we were fighting relegation for the 4th season in a row in that point and 2 divisions lower than the first of those relegation battles and the fact we had 1 point in 9 games a lot of people didn't bother, thinks seem to be on the up though, we're slowly creeping up the table and slowly getting more fans in i think we averaged around 8k this season and when we win a lot of games in a season we can easily sell a lot more for games, as shown by the fact we attract 14k for our local derby with Exeter and that was on a Tuesday night with them bringing less than 1k.

I meant to put that point in about Devon and Cornwall too, that's part of what i think gives some Plymouth fans "big club mentality" the closest club of similar size is Bristol City 120 miles away unlike you lot who have the Sheffield clubs on your doorstep

 

Don't think the Sheffield clubs take fans off us....Leeds have a history of fans in Barnsley from the seventy's, when we were bottom half of the old forth and leeds were one of the top teams in Europe. Our main problem is being under an hour and under 40 miles from Manchester..But even that is ok when we are wining. Which we a'int done consistently since we last came up.