I just remembered I hadn't started a match thread. Deriliction of duty there. Anyway we are going to stroll this one as it's very foggy outside my house so they won't see us coming. COYG
Bit worried about Galloway starting yet another game on the trot. For someone who has been injury prone most of his Argyle career...to suddenly be fit makes you wonder if we have a genius keeping him fit behind the scenes. ]
I has a clear idea how I want going to summarise this game but I’m amazed to see the stats on the BBC website make it look as though Coventry bossed the game. But I’m going to stick to my guns. This was a pretty even game in which they may have had more of the ball but we looked far more dangerous on the break. We started both halves strongly and finished strongly, with Miller terrorising them on the mist on the far side. They had a bit better spell at the end of the first half but with little real threat. On the debit side, we had recurrence of the Play Out Terrors with some poor distribution and loss of possession. What we also did though was wilfully throw two points away. With 2 minutes to play, we got an attacking free kick towards the RH corner of their box as Argyle looked at it. We’re 2-1 up and there were I think 3 options. A curling shot from Adam Randell or a cross from Randell are two but we need to make sure the ball goes dead one way or the other. The third, for the pragmatists, is a pass back to a CB and waste time from there. We do none of those but instead go for a short pass to Mumba who gets closed down and looses it, whereupon they go up to the other end and equalise. A decent performance, a good position in the game and two points squandered. We had this won, deservedly I think, and threw it away. That’s the story I fear. Randell got the sponsors MotM and he was superb. Can’t argue with that. However, someone needs to knock up one of those “Brendon Galloway gets home after the match and empties his pockets” memes you see on social media. In this case, on the bedside table are Brendan’s keys, his mobile phone and a picture of Ellis Simms. Galloway was immense. Unflustered, quick and ruthless in the tackle. He gave them the cube root of zero all night.
Argyle...2-2...Coventry...F/T. Whittaker...54mins...........Miller...68mins. Simms...65mins..........Kitching 90+6mins. An evenly played game...yet we had one corner to their nine ? Two points lost in the 96th minute....how did we not see that game out with some common sense defending.
I’m not going to pretend to be a neutral observer but I do have the advantage of having been there. I don’t care about the stats. I’ve said it was evenly fought: they won the second quarter without doubt and made chances of sorts. We defended well though out and when we got forward, it was with more pace and threat than they could muster. It’s a question of quality and quantity. A lot of their possession produced very little whereas at times, we cut through them like the proverbial hot knife through butter with Randell spraying the ball around to good effect. A lot of their “chances” were damp squibs whereas especially awards the end we really were ripping though them. Where we did let ourselves down was reverting to poor distribution from goal kicks and the like. That’s partly our fault (and when I say “our”…..) and partly credit to them for their pressing. I’d say our three CBs were excellent: Gibson always is, Phillips was much improved after a shaky spell and Galloway was immense. Ian Foster isn’t neutral either but at least he’s under some sort of professional and personal responsibility obligation not to talk total rubbish. He’s saying much the same as me. By the way, another player who deserves a mention is Alfie Devine, not just so I can say he showed some divine touches but because he did. There’s a lot of talent in there yet to be seen n full. In the first half, he’s close marked from behind, facing the wrong way but does a Cruyff turn and spins away leaving the defender wondering where the hell he went. It’s the most exquisite single piece of football I’ve seen in an Argyle game this season.
The other thing to be aware of is that this isn’t the same team as it w as under Schumacher. Foster has spoken about needing to change “scoring at the rate of a promotion team and conceding at the rate of a relegation one”. We all knew that but he’s doing something about it. It’s also relevant to our poor away form. It’s not that we played differently away but that the opposition played differently: more aggressively in front of their own fans, which made us wilt. We’re defending deeper but more effectively. The midfield is dropping to a low block instead of pressing high up the pitch. We’re using the long ball to the pace of Hardie and others to by-pass the opposition. In short we have become more of a counter- attacking side than a possession based one. It’s no wonder the stats look different but as Sensible always reminds us, the only stat that matters is the score. It’s 1 defeat in 6 in all competitions for Foster so far I think and that against Leeds.
There has been a lot of turbulence at PAFC since Schumacher jumped ship....or scampered down the anchor chain like a rat in mid-December. Not the Christmas present you give to a club that has bent over backwards to make your first go at management successful and well supported by the club owner Simon Hallett. Hallett has recently said that he has felt let down by what Schumacher did....giving Hallett no inkling that he had already been job seeking before they had a "friendly" drink together not long before walking away from what many young managers would have seen as the perfect start to a managing career. So days before the festive season started Schumacher left and took a large chunk of his management team with him.....not quite the prezzy you would expect from your cracker when opened. If that was not enough we then had key players being recalled by their parent clubs ....plus the fourth loanee returning to his club as well....leaving Argyle with a gaping player gap at a very busy time of the year. So now in February we have been rebuilding from the loss of a manager and important backroom staff and the loss of key loanees...plus a few other players moving on or going on loan. Not surprising that last night we had five starters that most of us had no idea of back at the new year period.......nearly 50% of the team replaced with the need to start gelling as a team straight away.....plus the new manager changing the style of play in the effort to make us more water tight in defence.....he had mentioned that we had an attacking force of a promotion team and the defence of a relegation candidate. My biggest disappointment last night was Stoke winning 1-0 at home to QPR....a result that took a little pressure off the slimy rat who jumped ship from the well run club ...that had given him that first step up... that all new managers need to start their careers.....Schumacher will find out one day that you can lose a job very quickly when a club owner hasn't the patience that he had in bundles at Argyle.
What’s done is done with Schumacher and Lowe and the fans if their new clubs shouldn’t have misery wished on them because of what we see as insincerity and disloyalty. We have a new manager in, I think, a new mould. I think we’ll see less fist pumping. We’ll hear fewer declarations of love for us. We still have players capable of getting us to our feet but they’ll be used in a more pragmatic way given the stiff opposition we’re up against in this league. He’ll leave us at some point but perhaps we won’t feel so cheated because he didn’t pretend it was a love affair in the first place.
There are adverts in this but for anyone who can't get the Argyle TV version, this is a fair representation of the bits of the match that matter - apart from the botched Argyle free kick that allowed Coventry to get up the pitch, win a free-kick and get their second goal in the dying seconds. Do we look inferior?
Coventry manager's thoughts on the game: https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/sport/football/robins-foster-coventry-plymouth-argyle-9101115
