The Cure

THE dust had barely settled on the defeat by Mansfield which ended Argyle’s seven-game unbeaten run before captain Curtis Nelson was planning the cure for the Pilgrims’ wounded pride.

Vadaine Oliver’s goal in first-half stoppage-time gave the Stags a 1-0 win, a reversal which Curtis says Argyle will learn from before going in search of an eighth successive home win against York next weekend.

“We have not lost in a while and it really does hurt,” said the pilgrims’ skipper. “It hurts to lose.

“We have got to start another run – a run of clean sheets and a run of being undefeated. It starts again on Saturday. What more is there to say? We have got to go again.

“There’s no point in mulling over it too long. We’ll be back in again on Monday, watch the DVD, look where we’ve gone wrong, and look to improve for Saturday. That’s the most important thing now – the game’s gone now. We can’t do anything about it. We can learn from it. There’s no point sulking.”

Oliver’s physical presence kept Argyle’s much vaunted back line on their toes throughout.

Curtis said: “He did present an aerial threat and I don’t think we dealt with that as good as we could have in the first half, but we sorted it out for the second-half – we got Anthony [O’Connor] sitting on his toes and it did help. He didn’t win the game on his own; they were pretty solid all the way through.”

The Mansfield team was under the caretaker management of Adam Murray, who succeeded Paul Cox on the eve of the game and made six changes to the Stags’ starting line-up to give the home side a much-needed fillip.

“You have got to deal with that and still play your football,” said Curtis. “You can’t look too much into what the other team is doing; you have got to look after yourself.

“Every game is tough but every game is winnable and it was there for the taking. We had chances in the first half and in the second half, and it could have gone either way.”