Perfect Imperfections

Reuben Reid scored the game’s only goal in the 64th minute to keep Argyle three points clear of Navy rivals Portsmouth going into another top-of-the-table clash at Oxford on Tuesday.

Stanley hit the crossbar twice and pulled the very best out the Pilgrims’ man-of-the-match goalkeeper Luke McCormick and Peter said: “You have got to give credit where credit’s due – they were good.

“But we made them look better than they were, if I’m totally honest. We weren’t at it; our game-plan didn’t get executed by the 11 players that started the game; and we looked very unorganised in the first half.

“We dogged it out, as a team, defensively. We had chances to score and so did they – it could have been 6-6; it could have been 10-6; it was one of those games.

“It’s unlike us. We usually nail our jobs down and we set high standards. We won today and the boys are happy, but there are a few boys disappointed because we set so high standards and that wasn’t good enough from us today.”

Peter, 27, who has been a lynchpin of the Pilgrims’ impressive defence for the past two seasons, also expressed disappointment with his own contribution on the afternoon.

“You look at your personal performance and you know if you’re good enough and I’m honest enough to say when I look in the mirror that there’s more to come – I wasn’t good enough. But you have games like that when it’s relentless pressure, it’s an end-to-end game and you can’t get comfortable.

“At the end of the day, we kept a clean sheet. Alright, we rode a bit of a wave and we got a bit lucky at times but we won 1-0 – good performance; bad performance; it doesn’t matter. How many games are you going to play well and get beaten?

“A fan just grabbed me and said ‘that was a good win – it’s the points that count’ and the guy’s right; we got the points. It’s done and dusted now.”