The "I was in fear for my life" Stevenage away thread.

wasnt parret here once under that shit manager reid but go sent back because he was deemed shit?

On loan from Spurs I believe.

AstiSpumante wrote:

On loan from Spurs I believe.

Thats right he came with David Button if i recall.

He was good as well, I was wondering whether him or Walton was going to score first.

Got back into Plymouth on the train this afternoon after having travelled back from London this morning. Stayed with a mate who lives in London overnight and had a great all round time apart from the result. I won't say apart from the 90 minutes, apart from the result.

For the second game in a row, I find myself saying very much the same thing. A very good all round performance in which the only thing missing was the finishing. A lot of chance creation against a good team in both games. A pretty good all round team performance in both games in which we took the game to two of the better teams in League Two. I've seen people say the problem was us missing Olly Lee, I don't agree: I think it's a case of correlation and causation not necessarily being the same thing. We produced a far more cohesive team performance against Bury and Stevenage than what we did against Cambridge and even Exeter. It just so happens that the two better performances did not yield the finishing that the performances in those games deserved (in fact, arguably they did with the disallowed Alessandra goal that is questionable whether it was fair or not). On the whole though, the point I'm making is that it's two generally good displays against good teams in which we controlled spells of the match. Bury and Stevenage took their chances, we did not. It was almost the same game on repeat both times and I sincerely hope it isn't a triple whammy against Northampton on Saturday. Our general play was very good and our finishing let us down on both occasions. On that basis, the real absentee was Reuben Reid.

When the teams were announced, I was disappointed to hear that Blizzard had come into the team replacing Lee Cox. As a few people on here have alluded to, I rate Cox very highly as a player and think some of his best work goes underappricated. I thought that his gritty approach was what we needed at Stevenage and that we'd be overran without him. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. I often criticise Sheridan for his tactics so it's only fair for me to admit it when he gets his Plan A spot on. That's what he did yesterday. Blizzard was fantastic throughout and we played very well without Cox. We played a very effective style of play in which we realised we were never going to outmuscle Stevenage so we did our very best to outplay them instead. Blizzard sat in the hole and Bobby played the box-to-box role effectively for the first time since his return to the club. That role seems to work a lot better when it's Blizzard-Bobby than when it's Olly Lee-Bobby. It worked very well playing a purely technical, passing style in which Cox's (who is by no means a bad technical player) more industrial and less fluid style of play would have slowed us down rather than improved us.

O'Connor as ever worked very well as the anchorman cutting out Stevenage attacks in the first half to prevent counters. The passing was on point from all three of the central midfielders and they all served to outpass Stevenage on their own (truly awful) pitch. We created enough chances to score too, the most blatant of which being Bobby Reid hitting the bar. Talbot and Holmes-Dennis also offered a good deal of width going forward. Nelson, McHugh and Hartley all led comfortably from the back and the fact that they're all so competent with the ball at their feet was useful because they too got involved with the passing game we were trying to play. We dominated most of the first half and we only stammered when we were reduced to ten men due to Blizzard's blood injury. During this spell, Stevenage had two very good chances and could have scored if not for one fine save by Luke.

We took a while to regain our rhythm after this point, but once we did eventually regain the rhythm we looked even better than we did in the first half. The midfield triumvirate continued to run the game and we did very well to play our own game rather than the home side's in spite of the decreasing quality of a pitch that was crap to start with. Alessandra too was a danger with his movement pulling a lot of defenders out of position to make space for other attackers. It wasn't mere sterile domination in which we only bossed possession either. We got the ball in enough areas to score goals and the only thing lacking was our bottle in front of goal. I am generally in the camp that says 'this squad is a very good squad' but it has one big achilles heel and it's the lack of a natural goalscorer or two. I love Reuben Reid but he's not a poacher in the same way that someone like Lavery is or Friio of old from midfield. The wing-backs continued to look lively (albeit Talbot's crossing not as good as it can be) and the centre-backs continued to look composed. It did look for all the world as if there was only one team in the game and it was us. Stevenage continued to adopt the usual time-wasting and cheating tactics that we saw in the home game and their striker ought to have walked for stamping McCormick in the chest on one of their rare excursions up the field.

Ryan Brunt had comfortably the best game I've seen him have in an Argyle shirt. His passing was a lot more tolerable than normal and he made the most of his body to be our one main physical option in a game that was predominantly deft, non-physical and based on short passing for Argyle. However well he played though, we were even better when he was replaced by Banton. The 10 or so minutes after Banton came onto the pitch were our best spell of what was a good all round display of football. He looked like an absolute bat out of hell. I've never seen such a genuinely committed display from him, chasing every lost cause...except for perhaps the last time he played up at Southend. Is it too much to hope that Banton genuinely has had his road to Damascus moment and had realised he needs to start working his backside off to make it in the game? Is it too much to hope he may FINALLY come good for us? We will see. Time will tell but he certainly turned a good performance into a better one last night. He too displayed technical brilliance with his passing and dribbling, not just mere endeavour.

With about 5 minutes of normal time to go, I felt with both my heart and my brain that a goal was absolutely coming and for Argyle too. Then, Sheridan brought Cox on for Bobby. I realised that I was wrong (and that Sheridan was right) to want Cox in the team to start with. By the same logic, although I was wrong at kick-off, Sheridan was also wrong to bring Cox on at such a critical point in the game where his alternative style of play disturbed our flow. Our gameplan was clearly to play a much more technical, silky and tippy tappy style than usual to counter the anti-football style of the home side. I still rate Cox and still absolutely think he has a role to play in the right style. But today definitely wasn't it. In a game where we were playing a high pressing game, then yes bring him on. In a game where subtle movement and a great first touch are of the imperative, it made zero sense to disrupt the good flow we had going on already. I was wrong to want Cox to start, but I was right that he shouldn't have come on and I said so at the time. He made some good passes yesterday but his movement at times can be like treacle and yesterday his movement was more bad than good.

He could also have done better to pick up the ball in the resultant scramble from the corner which ended in a break upfield for Stevenage's goal. But I think the main two men to blame were Talbot and Holmes-Dennis. I'm going to be frank about these two wing-backs. As much as they both excite me going forward (and I'm not just playing lip service, they are very decent attacking players) they both scare the brown stuff out of me from a defensive point of view. Talbot never seems to know where to be at any given time. He doesn't get back to defend anything like as quickly as Mellor did. Stevenage's main threat until their goal came from hoofing the ball over his head. It was a bit painful to watch Talbot trot back at a much lower pace than Stevenage's winger. The goal came down THD's side but maybe you can give him the benefit of the doubt that someone should have been covering for him given as he was so high up for the corner. His defending is still way too erratic for me and he has AT LEAST one big mistake in him every game. Kellett the second, basically.

So Stevenage scored due to a lack of organisation and after one more agonising chance from Lewi in stoppage time, the game was lost. I'll return to the theme I wrote about earlier in this post. As I said after Bury, in isolation this is unlucky. A game in which we played good football and had enough chances to win the game. Silly defensive errors let us down. If the last two games were our opening two games of the season, we would have zero points but I would genuinely be confident of automatic promotion based on the spirit of our team and the quality of show. It's just a shame that the ineptitude on show earlier on in the season means we don't have the luxury of losing games like this without it seriously screwing our season over, however. Our only saving grace is Newport's loss. Saturday is now seriously huge.

One final note...Stevenage are a cynical, horrible team and if Westley came to us I'd give serious thought to whether I continued to go regularly. Horrible, niggly playacting from minute one. Also Dean Parrett dribbling the ball around McCormick about 10 seconds after the whistle went for offside in stoppage time should have received a second yellow card for dissent/timewasting. Idiotic reaction from McCormick pushing Parrett over ala Matic/Barnes. Luke was very lucky not to walk but so was Parrett for the initial offence. It's a shame to see Simon Walton (who I have some affinity for given his spell here in our darkest days) playing for such a horrible team. Horrible manager, horrible town. God if we don't go up, I hope it's anyone but them. Even Exeter.

McCormick-7. Kicking iffy.

Nelson-8
McHugh-7
Hartley-8 (why on earth were their fans booing him btw?)

Talbot-5
O'Connor-7
Bobby Reid-8
Blizzard-8 MOTM
THD-7

Brunt-7
Alessandra-7

Banton-8
Cox-5

GreenSam wrote:

Got back into Plymouth on the train this afternoon after having travelled back from London this morning. Stayed with a mate who lives in London overnight and had a great all round time apart from the result. I won't say apart from the 90 minutes, apart from the result.

For the second game in a row, I find myself saying very much the same thing. A very good all round performance in which the only thing missing was the finishing. A lot of chance creation against a good team in both games. A pretty good all round team performance in both games in which we took the game to two of the better teams in League Two. I've seen people say the problem was us missing Olly Lee, I don't agree: I think it's a case of correlation and causation not necessarily being the same thing. We produced a far more cohesive team performance against Bury and Stevenage than what we did against Cambridge and even Exeter. It just so happens that the two better performances did not yield the finishing that the performances in those games deserved (in fact, arguably they did with the disallowed Alessandra goal that is questionable whether it was fair or not). On the whole though, the point I'm making is that it's two generally good displays against good teams in which we controlled spells of the match. Bury and Stevenage took their chances, we did not. It was almost the same game on repeat both times and I sincerely hope it isn't a triple whammy against Northampton on Saturday. Our general play was very good and our finishing let us down on both occasions. On that basis, the real absentee was Reuben Reid.

When the teams were announced, I was disappointed to hear that Blizzard had come into the team replacing Lee Cox. As a few people on here have alluded to, I rate Cox very highly as a player and think some of his best work goes underappricated. I thought that his gritty approach was what we needed at Stevenage and that we'd be overran without him. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. I often criticise Sheridan for his tactics so it's only fair for me to admit it when he gets his Plan A spot on. That's what he did yesterday. Blizzard was fantastic throughout and we played very well without Cox. We played a very effective style of play in which we realised we were never going to outmuscle Stevenage so we did our very best to outplay them instead. Blizzard sat in the hole and Bobby played the box-to-box role effectively for the first time since his return to the club. That role seems to work a lot better when it's Blizzard-Bobby than when it's Olly Lee-Bobby. It worked very well playing a purely technical, passing style in which Cox's (who is by no means a bad technical player) more industrial and less fluid style of play would have slowed us down rather than improved us.

O'Connor as ever worked very well as the anchorman cutting out Stevenage attacks in the first half to prevent counters. The passing was on point from all three of the central midfielders and they all served to outpass Stevenage on their own (truly awful) pitch. We created enough chances to score too, the most blatant of which being Bobby Reid hitting the bar. Talbot and Holmes-Dennis also offered a good deal of width going forward. Nelson, McHugh and Hartley all led comfortably from the back and the fact that they're all so competent with the ball at their feet was useful because they too got involved with the passing game we were trying to play. We dominated most of the first half and we only stammered when we were reduced to ten men due to Blizzard's blood injury. During this spell, Stevenage had two very good chances and could have scored if not for one fine save by Luke.

We took a while to regain our rhythm after this point, but once we did eventually regain the rhythm we looked even better than we did in the first half. The midfield triumvirate continued to run the game and we did very well to play our own game rather than the home side's in spite of the decreasing quality of a pitch that was crap to start with. Alessandra too was a danger with his movement pulling a lot of defenders out of position to make space for other attackers. It wasn't mere sterile domination in which we only bossed possession either. We got the ball in enough areas to score goals and the only thing lacking was our bottle in front of goal. I am generally in the camp that says 'this squad is a very good squad' but it has one big achilles heel and it's the lack of a natural goalscorer or two. I love Reuben Reid but he's not a poacher in the same way that someone like Lavery is or Friio of old from midfield. The wing-backs continued to look lively (albeit Talbot's crossing not as good as it can be) and the centre-backs continued to look composed. It did look for all the world as if there was only one team in the game and it was us. Stevenage continued to adopt the usual time-wasting and cheating tactics that we saw in the home game and their striker ought to have walked for stamping McCormick in the chest on one of their rare excursions up the field.

Ryan Brunt had comfortably the best game I've seen him have in an Argyle shirt. His passing was a lot more tolerable than normal and he made the most of his body to be our one main physical option in a game that was predominantly deft, non-physical and based on short passing for Argyle. However well he played though, we were even better when he was replaced by Banton. The 10 or so minutes after Banton came onto the pitch were our best spell of what was a good all round display of football. He looked like an absolute bat out of hell. I've never seen such a genuinely committed display from him, chasing every lost cause...except for perhaps the last time he played up at Southend. Is it too much to hope that Banton genuinely has had his road to Damascus moment and had realised he needs to start working his backside off to make it in the game? Is it too much to hope he may FINALLY come good for us? We will see. Time will tell but he certainly turned a good performance into a better one last night. He too displayed technical brilliance with his passing and dribbling, not just mere endeavour.

With about 5 minutes of normal time to go, I felt with both my heart and my brain that a goal was absolutely coming and for Argyle too. Then, Sheridan brought Cox on for Bobby. I realised that I was wrong (and that Sheridan was right) to want Cox in the team to start with. By the same logic, although I was wrong at kick-off, Sheridan was also wrong to bring Cox on at such a critical point in the game where his alternative style of play disturbed our flow. Our gameplan was clearly to play a much more technical, silky and tippy tappy style than usual to counter the anti-football style of the home side. I still rate Cox and still absolutely think he has a role to play in the right style. But today definitely wasn't it. In a game where we were playing a high pressing game, then yes bring him on. In a game where subtle movement and a great first touch are of the imperative, it made zero sense to disrupt the good flow we had going on already. I was wrong to want Cox to start, but I was right that he shouldn't have come on and I said so at the time. He made some good passes yesterday but his movement at times can be like treacle and yesterday his movement was more bad than good.

He could also have done better to pick up the ball in the resultant scramble from the corner which ended in a break upfield for Stevenage's goal. But I think the main two men to blame were Talbot and Holmes-Dennis. I'm going to be frank about these two wing-backs. As much as they both excite me going forward (and I'm not just playing lip service, they are very decent attacking players) they both scare the brown stuff out of me from a defensive point of view. Talbot never seems to know where to be at any given time. He doesn't get back to defend anything like as quickly as Mellor did. Stevenage's main threat until their goal came from hoofing the ball over his head. It was a bit painful to watch Talbot trot back at a much lower pace than Stevenage's winger. The goal came down THD's side but maybe you can give him the benefit of the doubt that someone should have been covering for him given as he was so high up for the corner. His defending is still way too erratic for me and he has AT LEAST one big mistake in him every game. Kellett the second, basically.

So Stevenage scored due to a lack of organisation and after one more agonising chance from Lewi in stoppage time, the game was lost. I'll return to the theme I wrote about earlier in this post. As I said after Bury, in isolation this is unlucky. A game in which we played good football and had enough chances to win the game. Silly defensive errors let us down. If the last two games were our opening two games of the season, we would have zero points but I would genuinely be confident of automatic promotion based on the spirit of our team and the quality of show. It's just a shame that the ineptitude on show earlier on in the season means we don't have the luxury of losing games like this without it seriously screwing our season over, however. Our only saving grace is Newport's loss. Saturday is now seriously huge.

One final note...Stevenage are a cynical, horrible team and if Westley came to us I'd give serious thought to whether I continued to go regularly. Horrible, niggly playacting from minute one. Also Dean Parrett dribbling the ball around McCormick about 10 seconds after the whistle went for offside in stoppage time should have received a second yellow card for dissent/timewasting. Idiotic reaction from McCormick pushing Parrett over ala Matic/Barnes. Luke was very lucky not to walk but so was Parrett for the initial offence. It's a shame to see Simon Walton (who I have some affinity for given his spell here in our darkest days) playing for such a horrible team. Horrible manager, horrible town. God if we don't go up, I hope it's anyone but them. Even Exeter.

McCormick-7. Kicking iffy.

Nelson-8
McHugh-7
Hartley-8 (why on earth were their fans booing him btw?)

Talbot-5
O'Connor-7
Bobby Reid-8
Blizzard-8 MOTM
THD-7

Brunt-7
Alessandra-7

Banton-8
Cox-5

Good write up..

Anorak.