Plymouth Argyle: Season 2 Finale

Hello friends and welcome back to the final episode in Season 2 of my Plymouth story.We left off last time with The Pilgrims lying in second place with just a few games remaining os lets see if we could hang onto that spot and earn automatic promotion.

April 2013

We began the month with a relatively easy 2-1 win over Walsall which saw a vicious strike by Vellios to oepn the scoring after 22 minutes. The second coming midway through the second half was squeezed in between the goalkeeper and post by shory term loan signing Zac Aley from Blackburn.

We remained at home to take on Sheffield Wednesday which saw Nathan Eccleston opening the scoring after just six minutes. Wednesday though had given us a thumping earlier in the season weren’t about to roll over and created an equalizer just before half time. The second period saw end to end action but no further goals.

Our next three games would all be on the road and began with a scrappy 1-0 over Chesterfield. Kudus Oyenuga who hadn’t started for ages got the only goal from the penalty spot after 48 minutes. The win was enough to at least secure a play-off spot.

The following game was West Country derby away to Exeter but with so much at stake neither team gave an inch and this one fizzled out to a goalless draw.

Our final road game of this series took us to the County Ground, Swindon and that turned out to be a replica of our game against Exeter but with one vital difference. Luke Daley scored the only goal of the game off a rebounded shot by Oyenugu in the 68th minute for a vital three points.

With Colchester losing at home to Huddersfield also by a single goal that meant we had won promotion to The Championship!

The final home game of the season got off to a thrilling start as Eccleston produced a brilliant individual goal after just 11 minutes. Again, despite good possession we failed to capitalize offensively and our early lead turned out to be the only goal of the game.

The final game of the season although meaningless almost turned out to be a dreadful embarrassment as we came from behind to secure a draw in injury time to save our blushes away to MK Dons.

Final Table:

In fact I felt we were very lucky to end up in second place as our form had been pretty lousy offensively and other results had gone in our favor.

As for coming in second our reward was a measly 10 grand!

Super Sevens:

I’m just delighted to see that Ekong is the best player of the season as he’s been solid at the back whilst having contributing 10 goals up front with headers from set pieces. Eccleston’s 25 goals was of course a major factor in our promotion success.

Our finances were given a further boost in receiving the leagues solidarity payment at the end of the season.

Finances:

As of May 31st 2013 our bank balance was looking very respectable after two seasons in charge. I’m hoping to keep things on track over the summer months as well.

I was actually quite shocked with this piece of news as I was expecting Huddersfield’s Lee Clark to win this award but I’ll take it of course!

Before things wrapped up for the summer break I received this very tempting offer from Leicester who had just been relegated back to The Championship from the EPL and whom I’d be facing next season. The thing is there would be no way Plymouth would ever hand me £22 million and I like Leicester because of some old favorite players such as Gordon Banks, Peter Shilton and Gary Lineker. So….

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I look forward to your comments.