ARGYLE head coach Paul Mariner admitted his side had shot themselves in the foot after the Pilgrims went down 2-0 at Queens Park Rangers on Tuesday night.

A first-half penalty from Adel Taarabt followed by centre-back Damion Stewart's set-piece header three minutes after the break proved Argyle's undoing as they try to raise themselves out of Championship relegation trouble.

The spot-kick was awarded after Kári Árnason's soft foul on Tamas Priskin and Paul said: "It was a poor penalty to give away at that stage of the game.

"There was nothing in the game. [QPR] had a lot of possession in front of us but nothing really hurting us. We conceded a goal at the wrong time.

"Then, when you readjust, and try and change it up a little bit, we concede a goal after 48 minutes. We did that last week [at Sheffield United].

"A ball going into the box to the far post - you see that every five minutes in this league and for somebody to have a free header at the far post is unacceptable.

"A team in our position can't keep doing it. We can't keep shooting ourselves in the foot.

"Two-nil's a dodgy lead - everyone knows that in football - [but] we just couldn't crack a very, very strong well-marshalled QPR defence."

Paul and his assistant John Carver now have to raise their players for Saturday's visit to Coventry, and somehow put together a run to lift the club out of the bottom three.

"I think we have got some players who are obviously low on confidence," said Paul. "We're going to stay positive. The lads are very disappointed.

"The support was superb again tonight. I'm just sorry we couldn't give them a better show.

"In simplistic terms, we need to keep clean sheets and score goals, but that's easier said, than done, obviously.

"We have got to stick to the plan that's laid out. The reason that we only lost one game in five recently, up until tonight, was that we stuck to the game-plan, and we were extremely organised, and there was a tremendous amount of fight in the team."

Put to him that the football world has written off the Pilgrims as a Championship force, Paul said: "They've written us off ever since I took over, so that doesn't bother me in the slightest.

"I'm enjoying working with the players, and I believe the players are enjoying working with John and me. You can debate until you are blue in the face about the quality of the squad but, if you come and look at the day-to-day running and happenings, everything is hunky dory.

"It's just that there's a great deal of pressure on the players to perform on match-day, but that's why they play in the upper echelons of football - because they've got tremendous strength of character, technical ability and mental strength.

"We have tough run-in - there's no two ways about it. Every single game in this league is a very, very tough game: when you are in the position that we're in, when confidence is low, it's up to us as a management team to try to instil confidence in the players."