30 December 2011: Spikier

So here are the results and indeed the spike this year proved spikier than the spike of last year, thus adding yet another spiky year to the upwardly spiky graph.

As we've yet to have New Year's Eve, the final mini-spike is yet to register, but the pattern of previous years has again proved repetitive: mini-spike in early December followed by steady growth before a huge leap leading to two days of almost-identical viewing figures on the 23rd and 24th, before dropping off somewhat on Christmas Day itself.

And the numbers? Compared with last years twin peak of 1476 and 1479 on the 23rd and 24th respective, this year gave us heights of 2056 and 2082 views on those same days this year, with Christmas Day (1221 views) actually slightly below that of 22nd December (1243 views). So with no intervention whatsoever from myself (except for my previous blog entry), the spiky spike rises to a new high, taking the video itself over fifty thousand lifetime views. Not crazy compared to some of those viral videos, but for a one-week-a-year hit, it's doing pretty well.

The other stats are much as expected - UK males aged 45-54 again dominated hugely. The only interesting one was the one I pointed out previously - viewing sources. There was a slight rise in Facebook percentage but the mysterious 'external' non-traceable source actually ended up accounting for 39.9% of this year's Bill Barclay traffic. YouTube searches came in second at 23.4% (I think that's something of a new phenomenon for that to be so high as well) with Facebook down in the teens and Google at only 8.1% of traffic sources, which is much much down on previous years.

So, Twitter does its job and proves to be the Facebook of 2011 as far as my video is concerned. In fact, if you do a few relevant twitter searches you'll see links to the video popping up at regular intervals and people extolling Bill's genius. Also weirdly this year someone made a negative-sounding comment on the YouTube page and it was sufficiently thumbs-down voted that it actually got auto-hidden. I had nothing to do with it and only saw it a couple of days ago!

Final thing: while Bill Barclay got 15206 views (so far) since the beginning of December, the 2009 Kokomo Christmas Lights video only garnered some 448 views during the same period. Goes to show that dinosaurs come and go, but Scottish comedy lasts forever.

Or something.

Happy New Year!

18 December 2011: Spikes

Here's an interesting picture. Is it a heartbeat chart from some medical facility?

No. It's a graph indicating the YouTube statistics of the Bill Barclay '12 Days Of Christmas' video from a few years ago. As you can see, nobody views it during most of the year - if you do a close-up of those sections there are normally one or two views per week. But then at Christmas it just takes off...

Interestingly there's always a little mini-spike right at the beginning of December. Not sure why that is, but maybe that's the unofficial 'start of Christmas' period when folks begin to search for Bill's classic song. Then it drops a little before remaining somewhat steady at a few hundred views per day, then...

December 23rd it just JUMPS - 1476 views last year. Then Christmas Eve comes along and it jumps further (although in 2010 it was almost identical to the day before, at 1479 views), and this is usually the peak. Christmas Day is also pretty big (1201 last year), but never quite as much as Christmas Eve. Then...that's it. There's a very minor spike on New Year's Eve, but essentially that's it for another year and the video slips back into its coma.

And the statistics aren't limited to how many views per day - YouTube also uses 'logged in users' to give me demographic info, and there are no surprises here: vast, vast majority of viewers are from the UK, Male, aged 45-54 - the people who would have remembered the song from the 1970s when they were young. Second most popular source of viewers is the USA, presumably curious Hoosiers interested in what other videos I have up aside from the 2009 Kokomo Christmas Lights (stats for that one, incidentally, are all Indiana, aged 25-34, equal male/female split, but that video only gets a thousand or so views per year now).

It also tells me the 'Traffic Source' for the hits - at least as best as it can. The Bill Barclay video has varied over the years, but Facebook embeds tend to come out on top, followed by YouTube searches (for "Bill Barclay" and "Wee Heavy and a Half Pint" etc), Google searches for the same and a few direct links from sites where people leave it as a message or a comment (2009 featured 528 views after someone left it as a comment on a story in the online edition of The Guardian, a major UK newspaper). This year it's changed slightly - 'Mobile Apps and Direct Traffic (unknown sources)' is suddenly at the top, carrying 42.1% of the traffic for Bill Barclay so far this spike, far ahead of YouTube searches... too early yet for the Facebook embedded links to really get going. This would appear to be largely Twitter-based direct links, which YouTube tends not to trace so well. So, I guess I have some link to Twitter after all, despite being continually bemused as to its popularity.

Anyway, all that is to say that Christmas must officially be here since the spike has begun. You'll notice from that initial graph that the peak each year is bigger - last year's total of over 4000 views in the three day period 23-25 December may be under threat... we'll have to see. I could of course try to fix it by publicising the video on various sites, but it's kind of more fun not to, and just see how people find it on their own.

As for making a Christmas video this year? Hm. We'll have to see... we're in Louisiana so maybe something Cajun featuring alligators or something....

28 October 2011: Green Pilgrim

So the fast is now over, and Plymouth Argyle has a new owner.

And, thank goodness, it's not that Kevin Heaney bloke. He was finally seen off by the Administrator in late September (as therefore was Peter Ridsdale's plan to buy Argyle for one pound and sell off the ground to developers). Heaney is now in deep trouble with his other club, Truro City, which he is trying to run as a professional club but since he has no money, it's now all swirling down the administration/liquidation plughole.

Meantime the Administrator finally agreed to work with James Brent and his Akkeron company to see if they could do a takeover. They completed more in four weeks than Heaney managed in four months - indeed, despite Heaney claimed that completion of the deal was mere hours away, it seems he never even began discussions with the 300 or so football creditors to get them to sign deals. Brent did.

Wasn't easy. Some high-profile folks, including Tony Campbell and former manager Peter Reid, kicked up a fuss at the deal offered, but eventually signed. Some ex-players wanted to sign but it took time, one example being the need to translate into Czech, another being the fact that the player in question is in prison, so in his case what are the legal implications? Working round the clock, one by one, these were all answered by Brent's team, aided very willingly by the Argyle Fans Trust and the good folks at PASOTI. Even Plymouth City Council had a part to play, and they agreed to buy back the ground for 1.6 million pounds, having sold it for over two million not long ago.

Finally yesterday it came down to one thing: the administrator's fee. Despite the fact that all the above work as supposed to be performed by the Administrator but ended up being done by Brent, and despite the fact that the administrator wasted four months by sticking with Heaney WAAAY beyond the six week exclusivity period (that he didn't even pay for in full anyway) - ie despite showing a large degree of laziness and incompetence - the administrator and Brent couldn't agree a figure, and issued press releases saying so.

So, one final mobilization of the Green Army - ie a bunch of folks from PASOTI phoning and emailing the administrator to tell him to get on with it - and this morning the news broke. Everything done, golden share being handed over to a new company named 'Green Pilgrim Limited' and Argyle live on. Somehow.

Not that the good times are close to returning, of course. Argyle survive financially but they are five points adrift at the bottom of the league and most of the good players have been sold by the administrator, who naturally kept the money for himself (and, possibly, Ridsdale, although the facts are less certain there) while the staff and players went without wages month after month. And although Brent states he will be an 'enthusiastic owner', he also states the club will run within its means, which means hopefully they can work out some league safety this year (League Two is really a very low standard so you should be able to finish third-from-bottom if you're any good at all), but don't expect any more five-year plans or Premiership ambitions.

If Argyle do reach the Championship any time soon, expect Brent to attempt to sell the club. But for now, Argyle are safe and they have an owner whose support among the fans is not only unparalleled with any from the past, but due to the circumstances, he may end up being popular long after most owners start getting shouted at for not investing enough.

This was unquestionably the closest call any league club has had to going under without actually doing so. A year of ridiculous scenarios and astonishing outcomes is tracked on PASOTI here, including the Japanese petition, Heaney's 'out'ing after being discovered eating breakfast at a hotel, the administrator's lies and his 'I was given instructions to lie by my solicitor'.

So now we can get back to the important questions, such as whether Matt LeCointe will become the first Ivybridge Community College alumnus to play for the full England team...

7 September 2011: Fasting

Actually I'm just fasting from Pasoti.

I found that not only was very little happening with the knife-edge situation - except endless extensions to the Preferred Bidder (who has no money) which continue to be funded by the goodwill of the Argyle players and staff going wage-less (note that the administrator has been paying himself and Peter Ridsdale in full during this period, and neither are cheap. Anyway, little enough was happening compared to the amount of nevous energy with which I was hitting F5 that I determined it would be good to go no-Pasoti cold-turkey for a while for the good of my health.

So I have no idea what's going on there, but I can probably guess.

Meantime it seems Blogger have brought out a new version of the editor, perhaps one that is compatible with the useless-yet-default IE9, Doctor Who was a bit rubbish on Saturday (can Mark Gatiss just not write Doctor Who?), the weather in Kokomo is essentially identical (according to the BBC weather page, at least) to Southampton right now, Hannah is for some reason knocking on everything and saying 'knock knock', the economy continues to bother everyone although nobody wants to admit it, and we're about to come up to the tenth anniversary of the September Eleventh attacks.

And the question everyone is asking each other here: where were you that day?

1 September 2011: Strike

Plymouth Argyle senior players now threatening strike action over not being paid in ten months. Although there are so few senior players now it may not amount to much of a team change for Saturday.

Elsewhere, rumours abound: ex-Chairman Paul Stapleton seen back at Home Park, could he be part of the BIL consortium? Peter Reid (this one actually reported directly on Sky Sports News) asked Brendan Guilfoyle what happened to the gate money, season ticket money and transfer fees, and Brendan replied he wasn't sure and would get back to him. And, interestingly, a rumour that BIL have pulled out altogether - but James Brent still hasn't received a phone call.

The main thing seems to be that wages went unpaid despite full assurances that money was definitely coming this month. Implying that not only has the BIL money not arrived (well, what a surprise) but that the income from four (4) home matches in August has vanished.

More as it happens.

Update 11.50am EDT: Rumour is that Brendan Guilfoyle has either been pulled off the case, put on gardening leave or something similar by the senior partners at P&A. Not sure what this means for the club (if true) but the stench around Guilfoyle has been becoming unbearable.

Update 12.45 EDT: Matt Slater reports that the administrators (Guilfoiyle or otherwise) have opened talks with James Brent, while continuing to talk to BIL. About time, too.

31 August 2011: Threads

News from Home Park after all the champagne-popping nothingness of last week?

Not much. Except:

Wages not paid. They were promised to be paid. Administrator (probably) becomes responsible for wages at midnight tonight, although not legally until 14 September.

Sparksy just tweeted: "EGM on 8 Sep to disband the #pafc Shareholders' Association"

And a couple of injury-prone players have joined on loan! Could be the shortest loans in the history of the game... more as it happens.

26 August 2011: Extended

No longer a rumour: the administrator has yet again officially extended the deadline for Kevin Heaney to find some money down the back of the sofa with which to buy Plymouth Argyle. Everything is in order, he says, just doing legal paperwork now, and he's satisfied that Heaney has the money.

So, yet again, no actual money has changed hands. Follow the money, that's the key here... and we've seen none so far.

Late Tuesday appears to be the new date. When presumably it'll all be moved again.

Weird thing is that there is no longer anything legally binding to stop the Administrator talking to James Brent and the contingency plan now. But you can bet you bottom dollar he won't - there appears no interest in actually saving the club for the Administrator (who isn't even in Plymouth today, he's in Sheffield), rather saving face by continuing to give his ridiculous Preferred Bidder every chance to complete.

That said, if Heaney does come up with 6 million quid all of a sudden, then I'll happily be proved wrong and glad that there's still a football club in Plymouth.