The Big 26
THE 2018-19 campaign for Plymouth Argyle has now been reduced to 26 massive games of football and 26 opportunities to climb up the table in Sky Bet League One.
Despite dominating Oxford for large periods on the weekend, a 2-1 defeat ended our involvement in the FA Cup and the season is now all about league points.
For manager Derek Adams, he is concentrating on finding the consistent performance levels that will yield positive results and the immediate lesson from Saturday is the need to be more clinical in front of goal, starting with the visit of Bradford City this weekend.
“We’ve got 26 big games to go and I’m looking forward to it,” said Derek. “Obviously, we’ve lost [against Oxford] but that performance, plus against Fleetwood, Gillingham, Sunderland, proves that we’re going to get ourselves moving up the league.
“We need a bit of good fortune to get ourselves going and probably the officiating to help us because the consistency didn’t help with the time-wasting from Oxford. It is the nature of the game but up to the referee to sort that out.
“We need to be more clinical in the final third of the pitch and stop goals at the other end.”
One important avenue for the Pilgrims in achieving the aim of improved results could be the re-opening of the transfer window in January and Derek confirmed plans are already being formulated.
“We have a Board meeting coming up and we always chat about things that need to be better around the football club,” he said.
“That [transfer window] is always in the planning and has been in the planning for a good period of time now but, as you know, it depends on other parties, players and clubs, for things to fall into place.”