Thursday, July 02, 2009

2 July 2009: Takeover

No, not that one.

Plymouth Argyle were today taken over by a consortium of Japanese and local Plymouth businessmen. Yasuaki Kagami (he's the Japanese one, by the way) now owns 38% of the club, while a couple of others, including new chairman Sir Roy Gardner, own 13%, thus adding up to 51% and overall control. Gardner becomes chairman with Paul Stapleton stepping down to vice-chairman, and existing directors Tony Wrathall and Robert Dennerly also remain on the board.

Gardner, interestingly, used to be the Manchester United chairman. Not sure what that means for Argyle, but it sounds good.

Meantime Saints fans watch on in awe as a simple takeover is performed without any arguments with the Football League, fake consortiums, firesales (and now giveaways) of best players, points deductions, administration and now doubts over whether there will be enough players to put out a team for the new season. Latest rumours include Pinnacle thinking of coming back into it, the "overseas bid" being completed sometime next week and even Rupert Lowe pretending to be Dan McCauley and riding in on his white horse in shining armour to save the day.

Sounds unlikely, but then so does Plymouth Argyle attracting major interest from Japan.

2 comments:

Kevin S said...

Does this mean big things for Argyle, then? Maybe they'll be the top team on the south coast before too long!

On another note, I've just flicked onto the MLB site and it seems the Braves are about to go down to a second loss in two days to the Nationals. That's gotta hurt.

DuncMcRae said...

On the other hand, the Braves did sweep the Phillies last week, proving that it's inconsistency that's the hurt, rather than just being a bit rubbish.

Argyle will continue to bumble along I think, 123 years of mediocrity don't go away overnight I think... even with new owners there's no real promise of new investment, although they're saying that the fourth side of the stadium might at last get made. Only eight years late...