eSports Preview: Expansion Plans

With their inaugural Virtual Pro Gaming (VPG) campaign drawing to a close on Tuesday night, Argyle eSports manager Ben Taylor is already focusing on ways to strengthen his team next season.

The Pilgrims face already promoted Mindless eSports in their final VPG League One South fixture, having recovered from a dreadful start to the season to reach fifth place.

Taylor said: “Compared to where we were at the start, it’s obviously much, much better. But, like I’ve said in the past, it’s still not good enough for my standards. We could have done better; we could have gone up. Hopefully, next season, we can change that.”

“We just need to sort our consistency out. We lost six, and then went and won seven or eight. We need to sort that out, lose fewer games. We’ve got quite a few plans in place for next season, and we’re looking to implement them as soon as we can.”

One of those plans includes forming a second competitive team, allowing the club to increase the depth of the squad, as well as competition for places.

“Next season, we are going to add a second team into a lower league – that’s classed as an ‘Academy’ team, and most teams have them,” said Taylor. “That will allow us to trial and develop more players, and give more chances to players.

“Obviously, we can only pick 11, but we want to give as many players a chance as possible - we’re hoping to start trials come the end of the week.”

Although the Pilgrims’ VPG League One South season draws to an end on Tuesday, their parallel competition, the VPG English Premier, is still far from finished.

The Pilgrims face Port Vale eSports on Tuesday, looking to build on a goalless draw against Leyton Orient eSports 24 hours earlier.

Speaking on the draw against Orient, Taylor said: “It was a weird game. Neither team could find a breakthrough, although we did score towards the end of the game, it was ruled out for offside – so we were unlucky.”

“Port Vale are a good team, they play a couple of leagues higher than us, and they’re doing well in this league. Hopefully, we can take a few points off them – whenever we’ve played them in the past, in friendlies, we’ve always given them a good game.”

Argyle eSports face Port Vale at 8pm BST in the VPG English Premier competition, before taking on Mindless eSports EU at 9pm. Both fixtures will be available to stream live on our Facebook and Twitch channels.

If you are interested in trialling for the Pilgrims’ new Academy side, keep an eye on the Argyle eSports Twitter account for more information.