The devil wears Primark

Quite what Plymouth Argyle were thinking when they brought Peter Ridsdale in to advise on their financial problems is anyone’s guess? Maybe they fancied a few headlines and knew Ridsdale would be able to escalate their financial problems ten fold within an hour? Or maybe I’m not giving them enough credit – maybe their problems are already irreversible, so they attempted to bring Ridsdale in as a scapegoat?

Whatever the reasoning behind Argyle’s apparent moment of madness, Peter Ridsdale did what Peter Ridsdale does best and milked every second of PR he possibly could from the opportunity. It was during this media blitz that Ridsdale gave his enlightened opinions to the BBC.

I did question the BBC’s spending when I heard they were interviewing an over-publicised former chairman, turned adviser to a League One club but in an interview centred around football financial lunacy, I suppose Ridsdale is the best first hand experience one could possibly hope for.

Particular highlights from the interview include Ridsdale revealing that he and his group of mercenaries… I mean investors… have recently had an offer for a Championship club turned down (if that was you Ken, all is forgiven!). The fact that this man is still allowed within 100 feet of any professional football club, let alone try to buy them, gets closer to the route cause of the problems with football finance than the rest of his interview combined.

That shouldn’t deter you however, because there are still plenty of other little gems of wisdom. My particular favourite is the revelation that a club “can’t budget for relegation!

Now, I didn’t know this, but apparently it’s absolutely impossible. You can budget for finishing fourth in the Premier League, but any attempt to put 18th or lower into a calculator results in mechanical failure, which could potentially have a butterfly effect and send the rest of the world spinning out of it’s own orbit.

Lucky Ridsdale is such a shrewd operator then…