Those Precious Two Minutes

ARGYLE had their hands on three precious points at Wimbledon for all of two minutes and five seconds.

That is how long it took the home side to level Jason Banton’s 26th-minute opener and secure a 1-1 draw, something that Pilgrims’ boss John Sheridan found unacceptable.

 “The biggest downer was the way we conceded,” he said. “We completely switched off.

“I wasn’t happy with the way they celebrated the goal. I’m pleased to score a goal, but I saw people run 60 or 70 yards – just get organised quickly and get our shape back.

“We’ve just scored a great goal – got ourselves in a winning position – then, 30 seconds later you’re screaming your head off because you’ve just conceded a very, very soft goal.

“If you hold on to the lead a little bit longer, you get a bit of belief that you can go on and win the game but it was a bad time to concede; very disappointing.

“We just didn’t keep hold of [the lead] for long enough and it gave them a bit of momentum and they came back at us.”

Apart from the collective post-goal switch-off, John was pleased with the Pilgrims’ defensive work and noted an improvement on previous performances.

“It was a good battling performance,” he said. “I thought we worked really hard.

“Again, we defended really well. We’re not conceding many goals. We’re working hard as a team – not many teams play through us.

“If we were cute enough, we had good opportunities to use the ball better in the opposition half. If we’d had done that, I think we could have caused [Wimbledon] more problems. That’s been a big let-down for us.

“We created little chances and I think we’re improving, but we have got to improve quickly because I see lots of silly little things that we do: we’re in the ascendency and then we do something stupid and we end up conceding corners and free-kicks where they are going to be a threat.

“We need to be cleverer on the ball and know how we can cause problems for the opposition.”