League Two, Too

HAT-TRICK hero Reuben Reid believes Argyle’s demolition of Lincoln City in the FA Cup with Budweiser can boost the Pilgrims’ league form.

Reuben, 25, rung in a first-half triple as Argyle brushed aside their Skrill Premier League opponents 5-0 in a first-round replay at Home Park.

The scoreline belied the fact that Argyle have found goals hard to come by in their Sky Bet League 2 campaign this season and earned another home tie in the second round to Lincoln’s peers, Welling United.

“These games are one-offs,” said Reuben, who netted in the fifth, 23rd, and 35 minutes,“and we want to have another positive game against Welling. If we can turn those over, we can look forward to maybe getting a massive tie. It’s a great opportunity.”

Reuben will lead the Argyle line again on Saturday, when Dagenham & Redbridge visit Home Park in a Sky Bet League 2 encounter, and he said: “We have got to concentrate on pushing up the league table and getting the wins, because we need to make the play-offs this season, no doubt about it, and I believe, in my opinion, we can get there – 100%.”

“With the squad the gaffer has assembled, and the training and work we do, this has got to be Plymouth’s season to really do something.

“I don’t think there is going to be a better opportunity to get out of this division. The league’s proving that anyone can go out and beat anyone. If we keep the level of performance up and, when we’re dominating matches, turn it into goals, we can slowly, but surely, climb the table.”

“Things like tonight will bring confidence. If you look at the finishes of the goals we scored, they were pretty assured, so you can tell that people were confident.

“I believed, up until I came back here, that confidence had nothing to do with football and I know now that was a load of rubbish.

“Confidence, for me, is not when you run on the pitch and say ‘I’m the best player here’, it’s when you are in front of goal the difference between sidefooting tamely to the ’keeper, or putting your foot right through the ball.”

Reuben is now hoping the growing confidence of himself and the team will translate into more goals for all.

He said: “I think my all-round game has been pretty sound, really, throughout the time I have been at the club, but, for whatever reason, I have just not delivered the amount of goals I should have. I can’t really put my finger on it.

“I think that, in the last few weeks, we have become a team that is going to enable strikers to score more. Before, I don’t think we were a team that was creating a lot of chances to enable players to have goalscoring opportunities.

“In the last month or so, we have really come on in that department and we are really dominating games, chances-wise. Now, it’s a case of converting those.”