It may well depend on how you define form as to how you see Argyle’s situation heading into Saturday’s game for the Greens at Rotherham United.
On one hand, Tom Cleverley’s Pilgrims have won three in a row in the league, including a 5-2 victory over league leaders Cardiff City last weekend.
On the other, Argyle went to Luton Town on Tuesday night, in the Vertu Trophy, and not only suffered a 2-1 defeat, but looked lethargic in doing so.
Cleverley’s approach is to take an amalgam of those two slightly contradictory emotions, and use them to forge a plan for the trip to Rotherham, who sit 23rd in the Sky Bet League One table.
“[Luton] was definitely a humbling game for us,” Cleverley told Argyle TV. “I thought we were second best, and understanding why that happened is the key, because I thought our worst 45 minutes of football in months before that was Lincoln's second half, and we fully understood why.
“We were all on the same page, and went and won the next three games comfortably, convincingly. And we need to do the same.
“We want to be ambitious this year, and now one of those ambitions has been taken away from us, so we have to go full throttle for the other one. You have to see a bit of anger in our performance Saturday.
“Every game is an opportunity, whether it's second bottom or first in the league. I don't see this one a bigger one or smaller one than Cardiff. The mentality of us should be: we're on the back of three league wins and we want to take that forward whilst carrying the anger from a poor performance. If we can get those two things - the confidence of the three wins, but the real humbleness and anger of what happened Tuesday - then you'll see a really determined performance.”
On the day of the Luton game, the Greens lost two players: Forward Lorent Tolaj in the afternoon, and midfielder Brendan Wiredu during the warm-up. The update, for both, from Cleverley, was not a positive one.
He said: “Tolly [Lorent Tolaj] is unfortunate news. He's come back, he's put his body on the line again in the Cardiff game and with the nature of the occasion, maybe pushed it too far and he's got a small muscle tear. Tolly will be out for four weeks.
“Brendan Wiredu is a little bit difficult to diagnose; it's abdominal, a little bit similar to [Brendan] Galloway's. Is it more pelvic, or is it muscular or is it hernia type? We'll do some more investigating over the next couple of days on Brendan [Wiredu]. Obviously, a real hit for us when you're already missing Joe Ralls and Herbie Kane. We’re really short in that area of the pitch.”
