Club News

All Points Bulletin

JAKE Jervis is targeting four wins from the Pilgrims’ final five games of the Sky Bet League 2 season – starting at his former club Portsmouth on Saturday – to achieve automatic promotion.

Argyle and Pompey are in a five-team fight to join already promoted Northampton in League 1 next season, with two more places alongside the Cobblers up for grabs.

“If we win the majority of our last games, we can get automatic promotion,” said Jake. “I’d probably say four wins out of five gets you promotion. Everybody wants to go up automatically and you can see how many teams are in there, looking to get automatic promotion. So it is going to be an exciting finish.

“We have got the points to play for; it’s down to us. Any win at this stage of the season is going to give you momentum and confidence. Hopefully, we can do that and go into the last four games.”

The 24-year-old Black Countryman suffered along with his team-mates as AFC Wimbledon inflicted a second successive defeat on the Pilgrims last weekend, but wounds have been licked and the Home Park mood is optimistic again.

“It was disappointing,” said Jake. “Like the week before, at Exeter, we had the majority of the game again and did not manage to take advantage of it. It was all us and I couldn’t see anything apart for a win for us, but we made a mistake and suffered for it.

“We have had to pick ourselves up and I think we have done that well this week in training. We are looking forward to Saturday now. You can’t just sugar-coat over it or pretend it’s not happened; you have to be real and face it straight on. We’ve done that and now we can go forward.”

Although still young and at the start of his career, Jake has already played for 12 clubs, including Portsmouth on two different occasions: once on loan from Birmingham City; the other after returning from a spell in Turkey with Elazigspor.

“I’m really excited to go back there and play,” he said. “It is going to be a great atmosphere from both sets of fans. Portsmouth have got big expectations, like ourselves, and they should be up the league, like us, as well; they are going to push us hard.

“They are both massive clubs and shouldn’t be in this league. Hopefully, we can win on Saturday and get ourselves out of it.”