2025 for Argyle. The old cliche goes that there are years where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. By that logic, it feels like several centuries have passed for Argyle since we were last singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and gearing up for the annual New Year manager search tradition.
It’s certainly been a year of contrasts. Some amazing highs and a LOT of awful lows with very little in the way of forgettability.
It’s a bit crazy really – imagine if you will – waking from a year long sleep or a trip to Mars to be shown a highlights reel of the year without any other context. The away end jubilation following Whittaker’s curling winner at Brentford.
The cauldron-like atmosphere at Home Park as we inflicted an unforgettable FA Cup shock on Liverpool. The sheer insanity of taking the lead at Man City! This isn’t to mention a pair of 5-1 wins at each end of the year, and a 4-0 battering of Burton. Three home wins in a row under Miron Muslic in April hardly scratch the surface. The chaotic 3-2 win at Luton, an afterthought.
You’d finish this happy montage to think it was one of the best years in our history, would you not?
Yet in reality, despite all the above, it’s been one of our worst. People talk about ‘feast or famine’ but it seems that Argyle aren’t able to keep to anything approaching a balanced diet.
Why Argyle’s Relegation Exposed Deeper Failings
For each happy memory, there have been at least two bad ones – some of which are dismal. We dropped out of the Championship after a spirited, but ultimately doomed survival push. That hurt a lot, but the real pain is in what came after.
Since returning to League One, the mood of much (not all, but much) of the fanbase has turned from sombre to downright mutinous. Chairman Simon Hallett’s famous words from the February Fans Forum live long in the memory. When/if we go down, he said, we can expect to be fighting at the top end – at the very least when it comes to budget. That may be true, but our ability to spend that budget effectively has been nothing short of dismal.
I’m a guy who likes to look for patterns. It’s one thing to understand what happened and another to understand the underlying factors that lead to it. It’s not about recrimination – it’s about making sure we learn from our errors so they don’t happen again. In this context, I think Argyle’s on and off pitch failures (more detail on this later) can be put down to one simple underlying factor: We have stopped being smart.
Read The Previous Argyle Life Article Here
Opinion: Argyle Life Reflects on the Appointment of Derek Adams
Argyle have never been one of the richest clubs around, even in the year Steven Schumacher got us promoted as champions. Simon Hallett has always said that the secret to his Argyle success was the ability to consistently over perform our budget. We may not be able to outspend teams but we would sign smarter. We’d use advanced data metrics to sign players who specifically suited systems that we wanted to build.
We wouldn’t just spend our budget well, we’d also uplift it. Our player trading model (which whilst imperfectly executed definitely had the right ideas) meant that we’d gradually increase revenue into the club to ensure the budget was increased for the next season.
The prevailing narrative of 2025? All of the above pretty much going to hell in a handcart. To sign Michael Baidoo for a club record fee only to then hire a manager who’s style of football was fundamentally unsuited for such a player… that was silly.
We saw nowhere near the best of Baidoo, partly because. coming off the back of a Swedish ‘calendar year’ system, he was tired after a full season but the failure of integration was also a big issue.
To put the cherry on the cake, Hallett confirmed in an interview to our fellow podcasters Pilgrims Pod that Baidoo had a clause that allowed him to leave on loan in the event of relegation. Imagine if he’d been good and allowed to leave with no fee. We’d be fuming and we’d be right to be.
Recruitment Failures That Defined Argyle’s 2025
The summer of recruitment was arguably even worse. The long, seemingly doomed pursuit of a number nine obviously ended happily with the hire of Laurent Tolaj. Yet, Tolaj, such a clearly suitable player for our system, was available at a modest release clause from pretty early in the window.
For whatever reason, we prevaricated and targeted other players first making it hard to feel that landing Tolaj was anything other than a triumph of luck over judgement. Refusing (until it was too late) to sign loan players? Not smart. Willingly letting Callum Wright and Nathaniel Ogbeta leave on loan despite both being proven at this level? Really not smart.
As for the rest of the recruitment? Well, Owen Oseni certainly looks like a diamond in the rough. But as to the rest? There are clearly some players who have quality but are prone to injuries. Xavier Amaechi, Caleb Watts, Ayman Benarous and Jack MacKenzie come to mind.
That being said, we haven’t yet hired a new senior fitness coach to replace Eddie Latimer who left for Schalke with Muslic. I don’t mean any disrespect to the club’s internal fitness staff when I say it’s no surprise the player availability has dropped off a cliff.
And frankly, there have been some signings who just aren’t even in the right postcode of being good enough and it makes you wonder what data could have led us to them.
Above all, despite the recent uptick in form, it’s far from certain we made the right choice appointing Tom Cleverley as head coach.
Argyle’s Finances Raise Serious Long-Term Questions
This is before we get to the biggest alarm bell of the lot. In the recent publication of the 2024/25 accounts, it became clear that we made a small profit of about £500,000 during the season.
Now that sounds OK at first but far less so when you realise we made over £8 million in player sales.
Without these, the losses would be huge. Alarmingly, the BBC reported that Simon Hallett has ALREADY loaned the club £10m in the six months following July 2025. Yes, some of it was pre-planned due to Foulston Park.
But it’s clear that some of it has gone towards plugging the financial black hole that is opening up.
Overall, it’s tough to see Argyle as such a smart club anymore. It’s not all bad. As mentioned, 2025 has not been without its good moments.
The women’s team is in fine form under Marie Hourihan and Foulston is set to fully open this year, hopefully with a positive impact on our academy.
Argyle haven’t lost their soul but they’ve certainly lost their edge. It looks like 2025 was the year where we stopped outsmarting other reactionary clubs and just became another club who lose money hand over foot and are reliant on an owner to make up the shortfall.
Here’s to a smarter 2026.
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