Grim Day

The Pilgrims’ table-topping momentum was brought to a shuddering halt at Home Park, as a clinical and hard-working Grimsby side took advantage of a below-average Argyle performance. Danny Collins headed the visitors in front on the stroke of half time, before one of Sky Bet League Two’s leading marksmen, Omar Bogle, netted twice in the second half.

The Greens created chances in the first half and carried a threat throughout, but were uncharacteristically wide of the mark when the opportunities arose, allowing the Mariners to capitalise.

“In the end, I thought Grimsby deserved to win the match," said Derek. "We obviously had opportunities in the game to score goals, many in the match, and we weren’t able to take them.

“But overall, I thought Grimsby were better than us today. We’ve known this season that they’ve done particularly well. They’re not in the position they are in the league without coming up last season and giving a good show for themselves. They’ve done that today.

“It’s a very tough league - you can see that with how tight it is from top to bottom. We’ve been able to get a good run. We’ll have to go on another good run to keep the momentum going.”

Despite still maintaining some breathing room at the top of League Two, Argyle have now suffered 3-0 losses at home twice this season - though Adams feels this defeat is tougher to swallow than the one on the opening day of the season.

“It’s probably worse than the Luton game,” said Derek, “because I thought we created a lot more chances today. It just didn’t fall for us. No positives.

“For us, we didn’t have that spark, really, that we’ve had in recent weeks. We had really good opportunities in the game; we should’ve scored. We’ve opened them up numerous times without scoring the goal when we needed to.

“It was a quiet day at Home Park today from start to finish, and it wasn’t a good day for us. We conceded very poor goals from our point of view, and they’re preventable. We’ve had good opportunities, but I’d say that Grimsby deserved to win the match.

“We didn’t have that spark today that we’ve had in the past, and I think that started from the start of the game. The place was dead at the start and it never got going. It transferred to the players and the players transferred that to the terraces.”