PAUL STAPLETON has lifted the lid on the boardroom tensions and financial mistakes which led Plymouth Argyle to the brink of ruin.

In an extraordinary interview, the former Pilgrims' chairman blamed a doomed World Cup bid and the leadership of executive director Keith Todd for nearly forcing the club out of business.

He felt local directors lost of control to Mr Todd and Sir Roy Gardner's 'New World', and that this signalled the beginning of a monumental decline in Argyle's fortunes which has seen them relegated twice in as many years and plunge into administration owing more than £17million.

He also revealed how Argyle had been poised to sack manager Paul Sturrock nearly a year before he was eventually axed – only for their unfolding financial crisis to make the move too costly. Mr Stapleton told The Herald: "My biggest regret was being introduced to Keith Todd. In two years, everything we built up over the previous years crashed so devastatingly.

"What's the single biggest thing that went wrong? In my view it has to be the way the club was run. It has to be Keith Todd."

Mr Stapleton joined Argyle as a director in 1998, becoming chairman in 2001 when he headed a consortium of businessmen who assumed control of the club from Dan McCauley.

His tenure saw the Greens rise from the fourth tier of English football to the second – and buy the freehold to their Home Park stadium from Plymouth City Council.

Having posted profits in 2004 and 2005, the club made six-figure losses in the following two years as its wage bill began rising. In 2008, Argyle made a profit of more than £1million – but only after selling more than £3million-worth of key first team players.

Under manager Ian Holloway, the Pilgrims spent much of the 2007-2008 season flirting with the Championship play-offs and, despite his high-profile departure and a series of disappointing results following the return of Paul Sturrock, the team finished 10th.

In April 2008, multi-millionaire Japanese businessman Yasuaki Kagami arrived at Home Park eyeing potential commercial opportunities in the Far East and USA.

His K&K Shonan Management Corporation vowed to lead the club to the Premier League and paid a reported £2million for a 20 per cent stake, buying equal shares from Mr Stapleton and his fellow directors Phill Gill, Robert Dennerly and Tony Wrathall.

Mr Stapleton said the Japanese directors claimed to have £3million to pump into the club – and immediately began pushing the board to splash out on pricier players.

Argyle looked at £10,000-a-week stars such as former England striker Kevin Phillips before signing Belgian striker Émile Mpenza, plus expensive loanees Paul Gallagher and Nicolas Marin.

"We pushed the budget out by about £1million for that year," Mr Stapleton said. "Then in December 2008 the majority of the board put some money in the bank. No money came from Japan."

At a board meeting that month, George Synan, then a K&K Shonan representative, said Mr Kagami was "personally embarrassed" for the delay in funding, pointing to the troubled Japanese economy.

He also warned the investor would struggle to justify putting cash into the club unless it made money-spinning signings of Japanese stars. Scouts had already looked at coveted midfielder Keisuke Honda, while a deal for fellow international Akihiro Ienaga only collapsed because he was denied a work permit.

Mr Stapleton admitted: "There were cracks showing there. We were thinking are they going to put in the money that they promised?"

Meanwhile, with Argyle struggling on the pitch, the board voted unanimously in March 2009 to sack manager Paul Sturrock. They even spoke to potential successors Ian Dowie and Gus Poyet before realising they had too little cash.

Mr Stapleton, who described the failure to sack Sturrock as a "watershed moment", was by then in talks with telecommunications entrepreneur Keith Todd CBE, an associate of former Manchester United chairman Sir Roy Gardner.

Mr Kagami was hoping to up his stake to 51 per cent at the time, while Mr Gill was hoping to quit the boardroom, Mr Stapleton said.

Mr Todd flew to Japan in May and, the following month, Mr Kagami bought Mr Gill's 18 per cent, paying around £600,000 and bringing American businessman Mr Synan in as a director.

In July 2009, Mr Todd and Sir Roy – both, like Mr Stapleton, chartered accountants – acquired 13 per cent of the club by buying equal numbers of shares from the local trio, who kept 49 per cent.

The move gave the new investors, together with the Japanese camp, a controlling 51 per cent stake. It led to Mr Stapleton stepping down to vice-chairman to make way for Sir Roy, while Mr Todd took over day-to-day-running of the club as its executive director in place of experienced chief executive Michael Dunford.

Mr Stapleton said: "It wasn't a case of 'it's up for sale', it evolved.

"We realised that we couldn't take the club any further – and indeed the fans had. To pass the baton on to people with some of the best CVs you could get...we thought we couldn't have picked safer hands. But we wanted to stay involved. The dream was: 'We're the boys to take the team to the Premiership'. We could be part of it and we thought we had the right people to make it happen. We thought Sir Roy was our knight in shining armour."

Mr Stapleton said a further £400,000 promised by Mr Kagami failed to arrive in July 2009. At the New World's first board meeting, he showed his fellow directors a letter inviting them to apply for host city status as part of England's 2018 World Cup bid. Plymouth signed up and Mr Todd began working on plans for a huge and controversial development around a new 43,000-plus stadium.

Mr Stapleton believes, had England landed the tournament, that the development would have been given the green light.

But he said: "I think the World Cup overtook, I don't think it was [Mr Todd and Sir Roy's] reason to come in in the first place but I think the development became a big distraction and over-rode everything they were doing. They thought there might be a big development opportunity, doors unlocked.

"I think it made those running the club perhaps spend more money than they might otherwise have done if they had to be totally prudent."

Mr Todd had obtained a mandate from the Japanese directors as part of the original deal, Mr Stapleton said, meaning boardroom votes were often split 4-3 against the powerless local directors.

Argyle had finished 21st in 2008-2009, narrowly avoiding relegation, and in August 2009 paid £200,000 for forward Alan Gow instead of bringing Charlie Adam to the club. Gow failed to shine, while Adam went on to become Blackpool's talisman in the Premier League.

Mr Stapleton brought a new resolution to sack Sturrock that month, but it was blocked. The club, having started the new Championship season poorly, eventually brought in Paul Mariner as head coach in October 2009, a decision Mr Stapleton said he was against financially.

He said: "By that time I'd not lost interest... but lost the actual influence, or the ability to influence was diminished. When you've been chairman, been controlling, and then your say doesn't make a difference...I felt like my skills weren't being used. It just wasn't a feeling of unity. We [the local directors] felt like spare parts."

Mr Stapleton has been widely criticised for failing to spot the severity of Argyle's financial plight.

But he said: "Internally, we felt there was this cutting off of information," he added. "It seemed to me that everything was filtered through Keith Todd. There wasn't the openness that we'd had before.

"Sir Roy Gardner seemed quite happy to let Keith Todd run it. He'd be the figurehead for board meetings, but quite often the board meetings would be by telephone.

"It was just a frustrating period. We could see that the club was going to end up going down and losing money but we couldn't do anything about it."

The Herald contacted Keith Todd but he declined to comment.

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