Today The Talking Stops

IT would be fair to say that the time for talking stops this afternoon at 3pm, when Argyle kick-off the most important match in their history at Rochdale.

Defeat, combined with an unlikely, but possible, set of results at three other grounds, will spell the end of the Pilgrims’ Football League membership after 93 years.

Fair, but inaccurate. For there has been precious little talking at Home Park this week.

Instead, manager John Sheridan has been concentrating on reinforcing the positives from a run of recent form that has seen recent Argyle victories at Chesterfield and Southend, as well as home wins over Fleetwood, Exeter and Cheltenham.

“We know the importance of the game,” said the manager. “There’s no use going on about it and talking about it.

“I’m not one of those who has meetings and keep telling the players this, that and the other, telling them to ‘do this’ or ‘do that’.

“We’ve been playing well and we’ve just got to do that.

“Rochdale are a good team with some good players, but we’ve picked up one or two decent results away from home of late, other than York. Hopefully, we can take it into the game on Saturday.

“We’ve trained as if we’ve still got 20 games to go. We’ll just prepare as if it’s another game, but, deep down, we all know what’s there to be done.”

A point from the match will render other results meaningless from the Pilgrims’ point of view but John is not playing the safety-first card.

He said: “I don’t think I’ve ever gone out to try and get a draw from a game – we’ll take the game to them. Hopefully, [the players] will respond in the right fashion.”