Bigger Picture

The Pilgrims’ run of four straight wins was brought to an end by the visiting Cobblers, courtesy of goals from James Collins and Marc Richards either side of half time, before Gregg Wylde’s late effort gave Argyle some consolation.

 

Wylde’s strike seven minutes from time followed numerous missed Argyle chances, and Adams believes the full story of the match goes a little further than the final score.

 

“It’s disappointing, there’s no doubt about it,” said Derek, “but if you look at it, we’ve created far more opportunities than Northampton have tonight.

 

“Nobody can deny that; the stats will tell you the opportunities on goal from Plymouth Argyle far outweighed the opportunities from Northampton.”

 

The loss saw Northampton level the series, so to speak, against the Pilgrims this season after Argyle’s 2-0 win at Sixfields in late August. With both teams exchanging equal blows and occupying the top two spots in Sky Bet League 2, Adams expects both teams to remain in the promotion race come the end of the campaign.

 

“I think both teams would hope to be up there,” said Derek. “There’s a good group of teams that will be in there. You just have to look around the table – there’s a lot of good sides.

 

“The way you look at it is that we won the first game 2-0, and they’ve won the second game. I think we were by far the better team in the first game, and I don’t think there was much between the teams tonight.”

 

After showing plenty of different shapes in previous games, Adams experimented with another different starting XI and setup for the game. Both Reuben Reid and Ryan Brunt started in a physical, attacking line-up that created problems for Town regularly from set pieces, but not regularly enough from open play, according to the boss.

 

“We thought we could cause Northampton problems in their back four,” said Derek. “We’ve seen this season that teams can do that, and that’s why we went with Reuben up front.

 

“We didn’t get the ball into the box, or we didn’t play between the back four enough. We didn’t create enough opportunities in the first half from open play. We did have a few, but our set-play delivery was very good, and we probably should’ve had a couple of goals from them.”