eSports Preview: Biggest Challenge Yet

ARGYLE eSports may be in outstanding form, but manager Ben Taylor believes Thursday night’s Virtual Pro Gaming fixtures will be their toughest challenge yet.

The Greens have won six games in a row, and seven of their last eight, which has propelled them to eighth position in League One South. On Thursday, they face league leaders Mindless eSports EU, also on a six-game winning streak, before taking on sixth-placed eSports Lucky straight afterwards.

Taylor said: “Tonight [Thursday] will be our biggest test, I think. We’re playing against a team that has only lost once all season, and then we’re playing another top team straight after that.”

Argyle will not shy away from the challenge of facing the league leaders, having already ended a few unbeaten runs during the current campaign.

“Like we’ve shown in games against teams that have been unbeaten and up there, we thrive under pressure – we’re better in the bigger games,” said Taylor. “I go in with the utmost confidence ahead of tonight’s matches and hopefully we can get six points.”

Taylor’s side were hoping to have secured a seventh straight win on Tuesday night, but issues with the FIFA 20 servers saw their fixture against Yxng Boys postponed.

“We were gutted, really – we were looking forward to it and hoped that the servers would have come back up before we were due to get on, but they didn’t,” said Taylor.

“We felt we could have won the game – we play the rescheduled fixture on Monday, so hopefully we can go on and beat them.”

Despite the lack of action on Tuesday night, the Pilgrims took another step forward in their development this week by joining the VPG English Premier competition – which the club announced on Wednesday.

“That league is with all the other affiliated teams – the likes of Oxford, Tranmere, Leyton Orient,” said Taylor. “As we said from the start, we want to compete with the best, even if we are a few leagues below some of the teams. Hopefully we can give a good account of ourselves and show people that we are a good team.”

“We will play in the English Premier at 8pm, and then the League One South at 9pm. Both leagues are important. Obviously we want to push high in the regular league, but we want to give a good account of ourselves in both divisions.”

Argyle eSports kick-off against Mindless eSports EU at 8.45pm on Thursday night, before facing eSports Lucky at 9.15pm. Both games will be available to stream live through our Facebook and Twitch channels.