90 Minutes, Not 70

AFTER taking the lead in the opening minutes of the second half against promotion hopefuls Burton Albion...

...and with quarter of an hour remaining, Plymouth Argyle looked in charge and likely to go on and win the game.

Somehow, in a five minute period, the comfort evaporated, and the game finished to 2-1 to the visiting side. Manager Carl Fletcher admitted to being baffled as anyone at the sudden turnaround.

“I’m a little bit miffed as to how we lost the game,” he said.

“It was a little bit of a sloppy start, but we got ourselves back into the game. It was two sides who had a tough game on Sunday. It was a little bit dead, a little bit flat.

“I thought we were very professional in the first half. Very solid, and did what we had to do. In the second half we got our rewards, our tempo was a little bit higher. We had complete control of the game, really.

“Then we lost 2-1.”

While far from a classic Argyle display, the men in green were rarely troubled by Albion until Nathan Stanton bundled in an untidy equaliser from a corner kick.

Robbie Weir then had Albion’s second - and last - shot on target of the evening, and it proved to be the winner.

“They’ve had two corners all game, I think,” added Fletch. “We had total control of the game, but we still ended up losing.

“In the first half the game was a pretty much a non-event but we did our jobs and stuck to our tasks. As the game went on we got better and better, got a foothold in the game, and then we came out second half we did really well. We had enough chances to see the game out.

“But the game is for ninety minutes, not for seventy.

“We’ll go through the DVD again and reassess it. We’ll have a look at the whole game.

"There are always good things that you miss out and there are things we can improve on that we don’t see at the time of the game.

“We’ll dust ourselves down, we’ve got a quick turnaround for Gillingham and we’ll look forward to the game.”