If you read the Sunderland board as I do (it can be quite entertaining on there) it appears that their general concensus is we are a bit of a soft touch and the points are already in their bag. After some of the results we have had as a nearly team I'd guess that a few clubs would look at us like that. However, the meaning of the word Sunder is to tear apart so Sunderland must have a derivation of being a land torn apart or in this case their football club. If only life were that predictable and these things would come true. The Ref for this one has apparently issued 47 yellows and 2 reds in 10 games. Now that strikes me as a man who thinks the game is about him rather than football. I hope I'm wrong as Sunderland are an attacking side from what I've seen as are we and if he lets the game flow then it could be a cracker however it turns out. Something else I've read is that they are pretty good at getting penalties awarded which we clearly are not. I watched England on Monday and saw a Ref give a penalty after watching VAR which clearly wasn't. We don't have VAR in the Championship but if we did we must have lost out on at least 4/5 penalty awards that we all thought were nailed on. So, to even get a penalty would be an achievement for us. Are we due one I ask? Anyway I ramble on. Can we win this one? Well the way we have played we could have won several others this term so should we be afraid. No of course not and we can win this with a fair wind and a Ref that might take pity. COYG
Well you were disappointed with our predictions for Argyle’s last match and I said that our away record wasn’t good but we weren’t at all bad at home. I shall say no more.
Not quite what we're saying mate. We were confident before Leicester away because we're capable of beating any team, especially away. Plymouth, as I said on our board, can't sit back which suits our style very well, we're a better team away from home. Your defence seems to have fallen apart, quite often, recently so I'd expect us to score as we almost always do. We're third highest scorers whereas Plymouth have conceded as many as the bottom two. We're not being disrespectful, just loving the rare feeling of confidence in our team
Never mentioned disrespect Smug just the confidence being shown and there are a few who think we are beat already. Nothing wrong with that as I think we will win 46 games a season every season.
Mustapha Bundu is likely to be on the bench on Saturday and may feature as a substitute. Ryan Hardie isn't yet back to full training: the home game against Stoke on December 2nd is a more realistic target for him. Mikel Miller is back after suspension. He does give us a lot of pace down the left hand side. Never mind a penalty Sensible: I'll settle for a ref who doesn't ignore blatant fouls on the edge of our box that let the opposition breakaway and score at the other end. And one who sends players off when they foul to stop a gold-plated scoring opportunity. If they'd been doing that this season, I reckon we'd be half-a-dozen points to the good.
Mustapha Bundu needs to start....he needs match time to get up to speed....especially whilst Ryan Hardie is indisposed.......that would be a good time to use him.
Not for the 90 minutes as I think he will need a bit of time to come back to full fitness. I like the idea of him coming on later which he has done a few times. He changes the dynamic when he does and he has impressed me. We do not need him being over used too soon and relapsing,
They’ll make the decision what he’s fit enough to do . The last thing we need is that he starts and then has to go off after 10 minutes having exacerbated the injury.
Good result for Argyle....defence stood up to Sunderland pressure and took there chances in the first half to score two goals with Whittaker and Azaz on target.
In many ways, Sunderland will have thought this would be an ideal fixture as they were able to block book the Life Centre for the morning for diving practice. Schumacher has said Argyle are naive at times. Nobody would accuse Sunderland of that. Having said that. Cundle was booked in the first half for a bad tackle: over enthusiastic rather than nasty but a bad tackle nevertheless. Late in the second half, it was handbags deployed en masse in a scuffle over whether it was an Argyle corner or Sunderland goal kick. One booked on either side. The difference between the two sides was that Whittaker and Azaz finished their chances with style and Sunderland couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo. They had more than enough chances to win this but didn’t. The first half was pretty evenly contested. Whittaker was allowed to cut in from the right along the edge of the box and you really, really don’t want to let him do that if you don’t want him to bend it into the far top corner. 1-0. Azaz tricked his way through to face the keeper and curled it nervelessly round him into the bottom left. 2-0. Sunderland made two substitutions at half time and started to monopolise the game, which they maintained for most of the second half. Having said that. Argyle looked dangerous in a few quick breaks they managed to create could have made it three. Bundu came on late in the half and I have to say, probably got more involved in his brief say on the pitch than Waine did in the rest of the game. That central striking role doesn’t suit Waine and the sooner both Hardie and Bundu are fully fit, the better. We knew at the outset that this would be a tough season and points would be hard won. We knew there’d be tough games and this was one. We rode our luck at times but won it with two classy finishes. I’ll take that.
I can't really argue with any of your submission notdistant. I commented on how easily they went to ground in the first half. I duid think the Ref was going to be a bigger club Ref at one point where he seemed to buy every challenge we made as a foul and let go anything they did which looked exactly the same. However in the end he didn't continue that and Sunderland stopped hitting the deck every few minutes. The Cundle foul was genuine and he knew it and was big enough to appologise to the Sunderland man. Yes Argyle took their chances and what a goal the first one was. Second wasn't that bad either. But, having said that the neutral would be left wondering how the score remained 2 - 0 to the end. Be fair we got battered in the second half having held our own in the first. It was wave after wave. We were due a bit of assistance from the football god and he delivered for us today. They (Sunderland) are a very good side and 3 points from this was probably more than a lot expected and frankly was deserved on balance. I think that even if they were still out on the pitch it would still be 2 - 0 even now because the gods decreed they wouldn't get one. The Sunderland supporters shouldn't be too down after this. They will play half as well as they did today and win far more than they lose. I take the 3 points with gratitude and move on to the next game. It was well worth the entrance fee.
You’re right. It took a while but I think you’re right: in the end the ref got wise to it. A shame it wasn’t sooner and that more refs don’t do the same. I’m glad you were there today: I was beginning to worry. It doesn’t matter whether we deserved it. We scored two cracking goals and Cooper dealt with what did get through. What they missed, they missed. Anyway, we’ve been robbed on a few occasions this season so what goes around, comes around.
PS A casual review of the goals we’ve scored this season would have made this Bullet Point 1 on the pre-match white board: “DO NOT ON ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ALLOW THEIR NO 10 TO RUN ACROSS THE BOX ON HIS LEFT FOOT”. They paid the price.
Well played lads. Fully deserved win. We were way too soft in midfield and defence. No complaints. Good luck for the rest of the season
You know me notdistant I struggle on......... I agree that it doesn't matter how we did it but the most important thing is we did. We will play 100% better and lose other games and twice as bad and win others. We were due some good fortune and hopefully we haven't used up too much in one match.
Thanks TopCat. I have posted on your board this evening my views on it all and hope that nobody takes any of it the wrong way. You will do good this season and I have no doubt about that.
