Heads and Feet

ARGYLE manager Derek Adams would like his players to keep their head in front of goal and stay on their feet in their own penalty area.

The story of the Pilgrims’ season, going into Tuesday night’s Sky Bet League One home game against Wycombe Wanderers, is one of too many penalties conceded and too few chances taken.

While, the Greens have not yet scored from open play, nor have they been able to successfully defend a lead in two of their three league games.

There have been signs of encouragement. Ryan Edwards netted from Conor Grant’s free-kick at Walsall; Graham Carey put us in control against Southend. On each occasion, however, we were pegged back.

Converting more of the chances created, and creating more of them, is a work in progress.

Derek said: “We need to be more clinical in the final third. We have had opportunities in that area. We would like to have more opportunities and to take them, and that’s something that we continue to work on.

“We probably have to do a wee bit better in the final third, taking our chances when they come along. We created a lot of chances against Walsall; we had opportunities against Southend, but not as many. For the last 30 minutes, we were camped inside Coventry’s half, but we couldn’t find the opening.”

In all three league fixtures, we have conceded a penalty-kick. While the manager dos not disagree with the misfortune of those decisions, clearly he would rather such errors such be avoided altogether.

He said: “We’ve given away two sliding tackles when you are in and around the box; you could say we could stop that and just stay on your feet.”

The penalty that gave Coventry their 1-0 win in Saturday’s match at the Ricoh Arena was awarded by referee Darren Drysdale only after due consideration of Graham Carey’s foul on Jordy Hiwula.

“I’m not saying it wasn’t a penalty, but I don’t think the referee gave the penalty,” said Derek.

“He had a look, then walked away from the situation, and then, a few seconds later, decides to give a penalty. That tells me it wasn’t him.

“It might have been somebody that spoke in his ear. If it was him, he has to be 100% sure in his decision- and he would have pointed to the spot right away. That didn’t happen, so that tells me that it wasn’t him [who gave it]."