Knowing the Difficulties

The Greens succumbed to their second 2-1 defeat in as many weeks, courtesy of goals from Lyle Taylor and Adebayo Akinfenwa, either side of a sublime Graham Carey volley just after the hour mark.

Once again, the loss did not come without chances for Argyle and periods in the ascendancy, but an inability to consistently turn those positives into results is enough to leave any manager scratching their head, including Adams.

"As a manager it's very difficult," said Derek. "I think that as a manager, sometimes you can't do anything.

"When you make individual errors it becomes very difficult, and I think today was one of these days where we made errors, we haven't taken chances and we haven't scored goals. It's not an easy situation to solve, because if it's a number of different individuals that the mistakes have fallen on, then it becomes harder and harder.

"Heads are down. To come in two weeks in a row and lose two games, it's very disappointing. Heads are well down, because we put ourselves in a fantastic position and we've let it slip, twice in two weeks."

The result leaves Argyle in fifth place, three points outside of Sky Bet League 2's all-important top-three places, and the boss is calling upon his squad to up their game, physically and mentally, for their final five games.

"We're in a difficult position now," said Adams. "I think that automatic promotion is going to be very difficult, because of the way we can't defend our lead, and we haven't taken the chances.

"I think it's going to be very difficult to get into those automatic places. That's just because we haven't been able to take the three points over the line. It's up to the players now to back in Monday morning with the coaching staff and get going."