After losing the first two games of the 2025/26 league season, Argyle Head Coach Tom Cleverley could have done without looking at the scoreboard reading 0-2 at half-time on Tuesday night.
Argyle were playing Queens Park Rangers in the first round of the Carabao Cup, and trailing to goals from Daniel Bennie and Rayan Kolli, who scored either side of Jamie Paterson having a penalty saved for the Pilgrims.
Argyle had played well but, following 3-1 and 2-0 defeats to Barnsley and Bolton Wanderers respectively, once again let in soft goals to find themselves facing an uphill task.
After the break, though, they turned it around. Brendan Wiredu scored early in the second period, with Owen Oseni equalising soon afterwards. Later, Oseni scored a winner to put the Greens into the second round, and Cleverley believes that the second 45 minutes on Tuesday could be pivotal going forward.
“I think the second half could be significant for us, for sure,” he said. “A real turning point. We’ve lost two games of football – it’s six points out of 138 – but for me it’s a turning point in our environment, in terms of the feeling in our stomach, and we need to take that forward into Saturday against Lincoln.
“I thought the lads were excellent tonight, to dominate the game from start to finish. What we must be better at is that when that is happening, we don’t concede at the other end.
“On the balance of the games, we shouldn’t be conceding seven goals in three games, because we’ve not been backs to the wall, the balance of play has not been in the opposition’s favour for more than five minutes.
“To concede two is disappointing, but let’s not focus on that; I thought we were excellent. We had 30 chances on goal, we had ten shots on target. We showed real resilience and character to go 2-0 down and win the game. We thoroughly deserved to win the game.
“Between both boxes we were excellent, but what goes on in both boxes impacts massively. We needed a massive improvement, which we saw second half. Mentally, I didn’t want them to be too affected.”
Nearly 11,000 fans were inside Home Park for the game and, despite the Greens’ deficit at the break, the home faithful lived up to that word – faithful – and backed the team throughout.
“I thought the supporters were outstanding,” said Cleverley. “It’s not been an easy start to the season for us, and half-time looked that way as well, but they were with us the whole way, and it impacted a massive result for us tonight.
“When you’ve suffered a couple of defeats early in the season, you can be more fragile than normal. We didn’t show any signs of that.
“Let’s not forget, they were a young side tonight, but we had two teenagers (Tegan Finn and Joe Hatch); we had Ayman Benarous, his first start in three years; we had Brendan Wiredu who has had a tough time recently, and who I thought was magnificent – and scored.
“There’ll be no asterisk against that. It was a fairly young QPR side, but it was a very, very strong performance.”
