Plymouth Argyle: Season 5, Aug-Sept 2015

Hello friends and welcome back to another update as Plymouth embark on their second season in the Premier League. Before I go on a big thankyou for all the comments last time and fro those that showed interest in my proposed Gold Coast United story. That’s still and idea on paper for now as I want to see how I feel about it at the end of this season. Anyway, back to Plymouth…

August 2015:

The opening game of the new season saw us travel to Ewood Park where Blackburn totally dominated possession with 19 shots on goal to our lowly 6 and once again our passing let us down particularly in defence which led to the winning goal that Blackburn snatched deep into injury time with Ekong being the culprit.

We hosted Everton for our first game at Home Park and put in a far superior performance than we did against Blackburn with Marc Pelosi over on the left tormenting the Everton right back and was rewarded with a sensational goal after just 10 minutes as he weaved his way through the defence before beating the Everton keeper. An inspirational pass by midfielder Maurico created the second goal for Pelosi 6 minutes before the interval and that first half brace was enough to secure all three points.

Encouraged by the win over Everton we then faced Stockport County away from home in the second round of the League Cup. Striker Fatos Beciraj put us ahead after 22 minutes, sliding into the six yard box to meet a drilled cross from Mike Pelosi who minutes later went off injured. I’m not having any luck with the wide player’s fitness so far this season. Stockport created a well worked equalizer just before half time which totally demoralized our team in the dressing room. My plan in using “fringe” players totally back-fired in the second half as Stockport ran us ragged scoring two further goals as we crashed out of the competition. My League Cup jinx had struck again!

It was back to EPL action for our final game of August with a trip to The Toon which saw 17 year old Romanian Iosif Baesu unleash a stunning shot after just 8 minutes to give us the lead in front of the almost 50,000 crowd. Both McLaughlin and Zeytulaev had great chances that went narrowly wide before Newcastle equalized just after the half hour. A motivating half time talk meant we kept our heads up and maintained focus, defending well and creating chances with Baesu almost winning the game for us in the dying seconds but his shot hit the side netting. Still, it was a good away point.

September 2015

With the international break in full swing I arranged a fitness friendly which turned out to be a disastrous affair as we crashed at home to Scottish side Inverness CT.

Our first league game of the month as at Home to Aston Villa and it took them just two minutes to take the lead off a set piece. This was quickly followed by the sending off of left back Bruno Bertucci and I knew we were in trouble. Villa took over the game scoring two further goals in the first half and adding another in the second capping off an humiliating 4-0 defeat in which we were booed off the field for the second game in a row.

Next up we traveled to London and for the second time in a row we faced the claret and blue, but of West Ham. A very even first half was highlighted by a tidy performance by Chris McLaughlin up front but his shots lacked power to beat the West Ham keeper. Early in the second half left back Jamie Richards floated in a care free looking cross ball that McLaughlin met out of nowhere and glanced into the net, 1-0. Just after the hour Jaguare went on a scintillating run through midfield and was brought down in the box to which he duly converted the penalty kick to double our lead. West Ham pulled one back from a corner kick (no surprise there) though we held on for a valuable three points to halt our slide into the relegation zone.

The final game of the month was a less than inspiring effort at home to Watford where we relied on an own goal to save our blushes from yet another defeat in front of our home fans.

Results Summary:

League Table:

We’ve started off slightly better than last season though based on the results I would hardly say it’s an encouraging picture though we are above Arsenal! The title is already looking like a «two horse» race between the Manchester teams.

Fixtures:

We begin October with a sort of  derby match against Southampton before what could be a key game with Arsenal based on the current table