I do not go along with the "must win" for this one but no doubt there will be those who think so. We can win this one of that there is no doubt. Which Argyle will turn up is the main question. Anyway go on plymborn fill your boots with the must win scenarios and I will just say COYG COYG
Rotherham's away record is.....played 10...won 0...drawn 2...lost 8...goals for 4...against 25. Anything less than a must win will be worrying....averaging 0.4 goals for per match... and 2.5 goals against per match...Rotherham are there for the taking. Must win matches in December should be far easier... than must win matches in April ...because the latter brings the realization and pressure of relegation with no games left to rectify the situation. We have got into the situation of dropping points to easily.....Scarr's studs up challenge on Chair was reckless...and probably didn't need an Oscar winning display to get him a red card. In Scarr's defence...he isn't a regular first choice anymore so might not be up to speed for those difficult moments such as this was.
It's not a stud's up challenge. He's come in from the side and not the front, which would indeed have been dangerous. It's not in fact his boot that makes contact but his thigh on the opponents upper leg. It's more of a block cum trip than an assault. Scarr started the season really well and I have to admit I was a little surprised how well he fitted into the Championship. But he's going to be picked when the opposition have a big powerful centre forward because by his own admission, he likes the physical battle. Against quick and mobile attackers, he may not make the starting 11. Here's the problem we have: Away form is our problem. If it matched our home form, we'd be 5th in the table. We need a way of taking points away and that may involve being less attractive to watch.
Our away form is twice as good as Rotherham's.....so nothing less than a win will suffice at Home Park for this one.
Having checked the video countless time...it seems to me that Scarr's studs had contact first with Chair's upper leg.....admittedly Chair made a meal of it with an "extra" roll or two.....and he was lucky that he got away without injury......the studs made a yellow into a red in the Referee's eyes.
I don’t agree and neither does Stephen Schumacher. He made the point that it was leg to leg contact, which is as I saw it. He said the red was probably right but pointed out that the ref didn’t give himself time to think: he saw it from behind but has his card out before he even got to the scene of the crime. No apparent consultation with the lino even though the lino would have had a better view. It was borderline and we aren’t getting the run of the green on many decisions as Sensible will confirm.
I will amend your sentence just slightly plymborn. "anything less than a must win will be worrying" and just delete the word "must". Adding must implies the world will end if it happens that way. It won't and it will not be the end of the season.
Well don't bother to amend my comment....what I'm suggesting is if we cannot beat the worse away team in the league then it is worrying...and if our away form doesn't improve then the teams confidence will suffer and so will our home results suffer as well......January needs a proven striker and an experienced defender arriving. Since the Coventry match four games ago...we have scored 2 and conceded 6 and scored ziltch in three of those games and only Leicester where top opposition.
Yes and 4 of those 6 were against them so it isn't exactly the end of the world as we know it is it. I get that we "should" beat Rotherham but if we somehow don't then it is not the end of the season as we know it just yet. Apart from the Leicester game I would suggest we have been more than a bit unlucky away from home this season and have had more points taken away from us by officials than we derserved to have.
Argyle...1-1...Rotherham...H/T Azaz...45+5mins.. pen.............Lindsay...16mins. Argyle running out of forwards.....Hardie off injured on 36 mins.......Bundu on.......Bundu off injured on 43 mins and replaced by Waine. Interestingly....the prediction league would have had a 45th minute that lasted for 16 minutes today.....unfortunately the first goal came on 16mins.....the second goal came in that 16 minute window ?
Argyle 3-2...Rotherham Azaz...45+5 pen...52mins.........Whittaker...90+6 mins. Lindsay 16mins.....Eaves...77mins. Ayala...Red Card on 55 mins. Not a game for the faint hearted....even playing 10 men Argyle struggled to win.......23 minutes of extra time in this game......Hardie and Bundu injured again.
I remember Tom Eaves who scored Rotherham's second goal today. In May 2018 he played for Gillingham and scored a hat-trick against us in a 5-2 defeat....on paper we had a good team....but we where lousy.....not a good journey home.
This was in at fact a game we should have won easily. On top right from the start, we weren’t direct enough and conspired against ourselves to go 0-1 down to a sloppy goal which not even the most fervent Rotherham fan could have thought justified. We then had the hammer blow of what looked like a serious concussion type injury to Ryan Hardie. He eventually walked off but then what looked like an even worse leg injury to Mustapha Bundu led to him going off on a stretcher. An extended first half finished with a penalty (at last something from a ref). After the break, Argyle came on strong and ran Rotherham ragged and took just a few minutes to make it 2-1. Within a few minutes, one of their defenders, already on a yellow, handled a through ball from which we might have made it three and was invited to leave the field by the referee. There’s been a lot said about naivety. We then somehow got the idea we were Barcelona in their pomp and set out to pass the ball around for 40 minutes without actually going into the final third. Rotherham didn’t agree, 10 men or not, and very soon it was 2-2. This spurred us to start actually trying to score again and right at the end, justice was done. Be clear, we were superior in all respects but really didn’t impose that superiority. There are times when we are over-aggressive but this was a case of not killing the game off as we could have done rather easily. A victory but it could have been so much more comfortable. This by the way would have been an ideal game for Dan Scarr. Rotherham have big centre forwards and Scarr eats them for breakfast.
PS Our little group remarked that there was a stage when it looked like WE had gone down to 10 men, not them. In the tunnel on the way out. I overheard someone else say EXACTLY the same thing!
Blimey where to start with this one. I'm going to go straight to the Ref. On face value you would think he was a real homer given they had a penalty against and a red card. In my opinion he started out far from that. First lets take Hardie because there is no doubt in my mind that it is exactly what the Rotherfham player did. That should have been a penalty and red card there and then. He went right through Hardie and was late. I do think he thought about thaat after the event and instead of not even a card he realised his error. So we got a penalty which was nowhere near as obvious as the one he didn't give. Bundu was taken out. It was cynical to say the least and the Rotherham player knew exactly what he was doing. That was a yellow apparently and when you look at what Scarr was sent off for and the fact the QPR player immediately stood up and laughed compared to Bundu being stretchered off then somebody explain to me which was the worst of the two. I think the Ref changed into a homer after that and gave them very little. The Red card for them was so obvious it is hardly worth a mention. He opout his hand up and deliberately handled the ball. Apparently a deliberate handball is a yellow and if he had not been booked earlier then he would have stayed on the pitch. Now to the match itself. We did almost everything we could to not win this game. Their first goal was a travesty of defending. Actually not sure why I said defending because there was none on show. We gifted them the lead. The Ref equalled it up with a penalty which Azaz scored with relative ease. We were on top for most of the time but kept insisting on wasting the ball and letting them look good for short periods. Just after the eventual start of the second half we took the lead. Deserved. However, then we let the 10 men run riot for a period again and it was suddenbly 2 - 2 and nobody knew quite which way this one was going to go. We passed it left, passed it right and then for good messure did it all over and over again. There seemed to be no urgency. Probing is what some might call it I guess but it was not pretty to watch. Ok if 2 - 1 up and cruising but not at 2 - 2 against 10. They got possession from us several times and broke away and I thought we were lucky a couple of times not to conceed the third. In between they wasted as much time as was allowed by the Ref who did little to stop it despite being reminded by the crowd often and loudly, It was looking like we had thrown away an easy couple of points. I turned to some random bloke next to me and said "I don't think we deserved to win this today" and within a nanosecond was whooping with the rest as Whitaker tucked it away at the death............again. A comment on Rotherham. You would find it easy to see whey they are where they are. They can play some decent stuff but they are in my opinion a dirty side. They are subtle in the way they do things but they kick or go through other players with an ease. You cannot in any league kick your way out of trouble and if they carry on in that vein then they are doomed now before the season is half over. Ayala played 5 with 2 yellows and 2 reds. The example and I rest my case. Also it was not spoiled by a 16th minute goal. I got the time smack on this week so ya boo to you.
Quite agree with you about the ref and Rotherham . They’re thugs and we were so much better than them, this should have been easy. Couldn’t really see the incidents causing the injuries clearly but I did draw the comparison between what happened to Bundu and Scarr’s red card. Reading Schumacher’s comments, it seems he has a badly gashed shin. You only get that one way and it didn’t happen in Scarr’s case. I did see a little vignette in the second half. Half way into the Argyle defensive half, on the Lyndhurst side. One of theirs, no 27. went down literally writhing in agony. Clearly a limb smashed into several pieces. Within seconds, it became obvious the ref wasn’t going to stop it and Argyle were playing on. A miracle! Up he sprang, completely healed. There wasn’t a whole lot of crowd reaction. It took only seconds but I happened to be looking right down the bore sight at it. They are a dire side and relegation is too good for them. Nevertheless, 4:1 would have been a more representative score than 3:2 and we need to start showing our quality in results.
I saw the dramatic collapse as well notdistant and the instant recovery. To be fair a whole load of teams do that so it isn't really a unique spectacle is it. Scarr's victim did it at QPR as an example. I said to my crowd before the kick off that we were due a penalty. I did not think we would have the full array of possibilities all in one match though. We should be saying about time to and well done Ref but instead despite what we were given or they deserved we aren't are we we are still saying what a load of pony the official was.
I don’t understand how a tackle that doesn’t make contact with the ball, catches an opponent halfway up his shin and causes a gash which it seems will require surgery is a yellow card. What’s the red card for? To keep the yellow company in his pocket? I also don’t understand whether why, when after a corner at the other end, and a quick breakaway, a highly skilled professional football player (Finn Azaz in the 25th minute) is running through alone on just the keeper in a central position 20 yards out and is deliberately tripped from behind, it isn’t denial of a clear scoring opportunity. Bearing in mind how fans would react if he didn’t score from there, what is a clear opportunity then and how is that just a yellow and not a red? Not just home fans either: the away fans would be gleefully jeering him if he missed that chance. So in a straw poll, the 16,000 in Home Park unanimously agree that was a clear scoring opportunity. Only one person didn’t. I’ll accept the Hardie incident as an accident but by my count, Ayala should have been off in the 25th for tripping Azaz, Ofoffin in the 36th for fouling Bundu and conceivably a substitute defender in the 55th if they committed the same handball that got Ayala his second yellow. Surely that was a clear scoring opportunity and a red all by itself too. That guy punched a referee last week. I’m not quite condoning it, but God, but to be honest, at times I can easily understand how he felt. If we get much more of the appallingly bad refereeing we’ve seen at Argyle this year and on TV, I might be actively supporting it.
There was enough there yesterday for at least 3 red cards although 2 of them would have been the same man. I still think the player went through Hardie and was late. It was reckless and dangerous and the result was the end of the match for our man. That is a red. The challenge on Bundu was a red. The deliberate handball was a red and not a yellow. I haven't even considered the assault on Azaz and a goal scoring opportunity. Despite the Ref changing sides and becoming a green for the rest of the match he still bottled the important decisions. I could never condone a player punching a Ref no matter what. However I might just volunteer to be a stand in and do it myself.
