Saturday sees Argyle round out their home fixtures for the Sky Bet League One season, with the visit of Port Vale.
Vale are already relegated, but have shown that they are not going down without a fight, only losing one of their last five games, although they have been in frequent action – by Saturday, they will have played five games in 11 days.
Argyle’s equation is in equal parts simple and convoluted. On the latter point, there are so many variables and permutations as to how the Greens get themselves into the top six, but in short – they need a few favours. Argyle are six, four and four points respectively behind Bradford City, Stockport and Stevenage. If all three win on Saturday, Argyle will know, whatever they do, that they will be playing League One football next season.
Stevenage and Stockport play their games in early kick-offs, so that could be even more telling for the Greens. For Tom Cleverley, though, all he can do is set his team up to win. Nothing can be done to control what happens elsewhere. If at least one of those other teams loses, and Argyle win, there will still be hope.
“We want to send our regular season out with a bang,” Cleverley told Argyle TV, “for a group of supporters that have been with us through thick and thin, supported us in huge numbers and huge voice.
“If we win three points and results keep going our way, we could get another chance to do that later on.
“There'll be a twist, for sure there'll be a twist, so, if there is, we just have to do our job. I think that starts with, first of all, believing that we can still achieve something. Second of all, really focusing on our job. We’ll know the Stevenage result with it being an earlier kick-off, but that won't take anything away from our focus building up to Saturday, 3pm. We've just got to do our job.
“I think [Port Vale have] been really resilient recently. I think only four defeats in their last ten. They've played Bolton, Cardiff, Huddersfield in that period, not conceding many goals. This is going to be a tough nut to crack. We need to be on full throttle, high intensity, high energy, high aggression to break down a very resilient, durable side at the minute.
“They’re probably a few clinical moments in front of goal away from being a good side. You do look at some of their stats and they are, I think, the side that have conceded the fewest goals in the bottom half of the table or something like that, and it's by quite a considerable margin, and yet they've been down there the whole time.
“I think scoring goals has been an issue for them under Darren [Moore] and under Jon [Brady], so that'll be something that they will be trying to address, and have a strong finish to the season to take into next year. They've got good pace in their team, so we have to be mindful of that and aware of that. They're a very organised team. They're very gritty, determined to limit your chances, and we're going to have to not just accept that, we're going to have to work hard to break that down.
“We've got to go out there and look like it means the world to us to, first of all, do our job in terms of play-off push, but second of all, show appreciation for what our supporters have given us, how they've helped us, how together they've stuck with us. And that will never, hopefully, ever, be missing from one of our performances moving forward.
“Yes, we are trying our best for ourselves, our team, but there's always that appreciation in our performances for our supporters and what they do to follow this club.”
