Club News
Graham's Army
21st May 2016
ARGYLE'S Player of the Season, Graham Carey, says that he has never seen anything like the away support that the Green Army have given him and his teammates this season.
The Green Army have regularly sold over 1,000 tickets for away games in Sky Bet League 2, and have already sold over 31,000 tickets for the play-off final at Wembley against AFC Wimbledon, with the Pilgrims travelling to Wembley for the second time in the club's history.
"You can see the passion the fans have," said Graham. "Especially the away support this season. I have been to clubs where we have had to travel a lot for games and I have never seen anything like what we have this year. I think we have averaged well over a thousand in every away game which is incredible in League 2. Some of them have been two, two and a half.
The Pilgrims will walk out at Wembley with 90 minutes to win promotion to League 1. Graham says that the backing from the Green Army will be a boost for Argyle.
"When we walk out I think it will [be a boost]," Graham said. "When the whistle goes it is just another game with the pressure that we put on ourselves. At the start of the season, our goal as a team and as a club was to get promoted and we have 90 minutes to do that. I think the pressure everyone else puts on us is small comparison to what we put on ourselves as a team. We know we are good enough to go up - we probably should have done it automatic - but now we have got another chance, playing at Wembley. It is going to be the best way to do it, and hopefully we can do that."
Graham said that he thinks that the Pilgrims' wild celebrations after beating Portsmouth and booking their place in the play-off final at Wembley were influenced by the struggles that the club have been through over the past few years.
"It has been such a long road the last few years," he said. "The predicament the club was in and where it has come from. I think finally we have turned a corner as a club. Hopefully we can finish the job and I think it will be something the fans really deserve. The last time I played here they were in League 1 and doing well and the atmosphere was amazing. It has been quite a fall from then. Finally we are on an upwards trajectory and hopefully we can finish the job off and playing League One football next season would be the icing on the cake to what has been a great season.
"When I was at St Mirren we won the Scottish League Cup, but I think the cup is a different mindset because it is a cup competition and what that entails. Promotion is so much bigger and so much more important, not only for the club but for the City, and the people all around it. A lot more comes with the pressure of promotion and for a club to build the foundations we have laid and that is what we want to do. For us to get our first step towards that, it is massive.
"I think that we showed we could handle pressure here on Sunday. Everyone built it up to be such a big tie between two big clubs but we held our nerve especially in the last half hour with the way we played and created chances. There was only going to be one winner and that showed how much we have grown as a team this year."
Graham celebrated his 27th birthday on May 20, just ten days before the final at Wembley. That makes Graham one of the more experienced players in Argyle's relatively young team.
He said: "We have got some young lads and I think it was important for the experienced lads to guide the young lads through. As a club and as a team I think we did that. If you had given that at the start of the season, to have 90 minutes to win the game and get promoted we would have taken it. I think every club would have taken it. It is nothing new to us."
"We put pressure on ourselves and we set out at the start of the season to get promoted. There is no reason why we can't just go there and play our own game like we did with these two games, we didn't really play the occasion we played each leg as a one off game and I think that worked. The mentality that we have is just play another 90 minutes and see where it takes us."
League One, hopefully.