Plymouth Argyle manager latest: Simon Hallett criteria, Ian Foster summer impact, search for investment | OneFootball

With a Championship relegation battle to survive as well as a new manager to search for, it is safe to say there won’t be many dull moments at Plymouth Argyle over the course of the next few months.

The Pilgrims are on the search for their third manager of the season after the departure of Ian Foster on Easter Monday, with the former England youth boss failing to deliver results in his short stint as Argyle boss.

With just four wins from his 17 matches in charge in Devon, the 47-year-old left Home Park with his side teetering on the edge of the relegation zone in the second tier, having failed to capitalise on the start Steven Schumacher had made with eh club before moving to Championship rivals Stoke City.

With just two points separating themselves and the bottom three ahead of the weekend’s fixtures, their status as a second tier side is still in the balance with four matches remaining in the season, with director of football Neil Dewsnip and Argyle stalwart Kevin Nancekivell taking the reins until the summer.

The search for a new boss will be churning along in the background, and after a victory against Rotherham United and a midweek draw with Queens Park Rangers last time out, here are the latest updates on the quest for a successor at Home Park.

Simon Hallett opens up on what he wants in the next Argyle boss

Argyle Chairman Simon Hallett has always been transparent in his ownership of the football club, and the USA-based businessman told Plymouth Live about the ongoing search for a new manager.

He said: “We are going to talk about it this week, what are the learnings from this one going wrong. The basic criteria we are looking for are going to be similar. There will be a few additions I think we have to look for so that could mean the filtering process will lead to some different outcomes.

“At the moment, I think it's too early to say exactly whether we are going to be looking for anything particularly different, but we want to play attacking football, and I think that was one of Ian's problems.

“Ian figured out pretty early on how to tighten up the defence and that worked, but he needed to figure out how to tighten up the defence without strangling the attack, and clearly he never quite figured that out.

“So a manager who is good at both ends of the pitch - and in the middle! - would be great, somebody who is innovative, who understands the culture here and likes the culture here.

“I think what we have had here most of the time over the last five years is a really cohesive club, and a manager who understands he's a cog in that machine as opposed to somebody who is running everything is important.

“We have lacked cohesion for the last three or four months. I'm not saying it's Ian's fault. I think there is fault on both sides, but we lacked that cohesiveness between the playing squad, the back office staff, the ownership, the fans.

“The sum of our parts was much greater than any of the individual parts, I think, so we have got to get back to that and have a manager who understands that.”

Ian Foster sacking will have implications for Plymouth Argyle transfer window

With Foster signing a contract with the club until the summer of 2027 when he joined the club, the price of ending his contract early will have given the Argyle transfer budget a major blow heading into the summer.

Hallett has taken pride in running the Greens as a sustainable club during his tenure, and elaborated on the impact the early dismissal of their boss will have during the off-season.

He said: “Of course. Anything when money goes out unexpectedly it impacts the future. Yes, absolutely.

“We will see. As everybody knows we are looking for a new investor, so when we think about it now we have to have four budgets - we have to have a Championship budget with a new investor, a Championship budget without a new investor, a League One budget with a new investor and a League One budget without a new investor.

“We can't say at the moment. The goal will be, as we have said since the beginning of this season, to find a new investor who is going to help us push further up the Championship than we are at the moment.”

Hallett has already stated that he is searching for new investment into the club, with the search for more financial aid needed to sustain life as a Championship club.

Argyle have already had backing from American-based companies in the past, with Florida-based Argyle Green, LLC reportedly investing £4m into the club in 2022.

Hallett then increased his ownership of the club to 87% last summer after agreeing to buy shares from some of the outgoing investors, before outlining the need for more support if their dream of becoming a top six Championship club with Premier League aspirations by 2028 was to be realised.

"We have got a few irons in the fire, progress has been more slow than we had hoped so nothing has been done yet. We had hopes something would be done several months before this, but we have got a few things that I obviously can't disclose directly,” he told Plymouth Live.

"We have got at least two I know about that are possibles, one of which is quite a strong possibility, and there is a couple more I'm going to get briefed about today (Tuesday)."

"So if we are to achieve the goal of getting a new investor who is going to help fund not just the infrastructure but a bit more money into the squad then that's going to have to be by the transfer window.

"If we can't we are going to be competing at the bottom half of the Championship like we have been this season."

If investors are found, Argyle will pack plenty more punch when attracting prospective new bosses, with the Greens aiming to be competing much higher in the Championship table if they manage to stay in the second tier this season.

With more money in the bank, any prospective manager is likely to have a more considerable war chest to work with over the summer, in what is shaping up to be an off-season of much-change at Home Park.