'I Didn't See It Coming'

JOHN Sheridan pulled no punches after the Pilgrims’ opening-day defeat at Southend.

The Argyle manager had been among many going into the new Sky Bet league 2 season with optimism.

However, he admitted that his side’s performance in their loss to Barry Corr’s 15th-minute strike at Roots Hall had caught him by surprise.

“I didn’t see that coming,” he said.

“I’ve been building us up and saying we are going to do this and going to do that. And, today, we’ve let ourselves down.

“I’m very disappointed with the performance. I expected a lot more.

“I don’t think we got going at all. We had one or two little chances in the second half, but I think Southend deserved their victory.

“I don’t think any player performed to the quality I want them to perform.

“The only positive is we’ve got 45 games left. We need to get it sorted it out.”

Argyle had looked in good fettle during pre-season, ending their preparations with a pleasing performance against Championship side Yeovil a week earlier that had inspired great expectations that were not met.

John said: “It was a typical first game of the season – you do all the running, you look sharp and you look fit, then, all of a sudden, your first game comes along and everyone looks tired.

“We wanted to come here and get off to a good start but we didn’t get going at all. We looked really leggy, and the reason we looked leggy was that we gave the ball away so many times.

“I couldn’t believe our ball-retention today – we kept returning the ball – and how many times there were wrong decisions.

“I expected us to cause them a lot more problems, but we didn’t get going at all and that should never be the case in the first game of the season.”