Boxing Day’s bizarre 4-1 loss at home to Reading is fairly difficult to sum up.
The shortest version is probably to break it down into a few constituent parts. The first bit being the opening 20 minutes (or even simply minutes 12 to 19) in which Argyle had Joe Ralls sent off when he gave a penalty away, and proceeded to concede three goals in that short span, to find themselves 3-0 down.
At that point, players, fans and coaches alike might have been dreading an avalanche of goals against, but instead what panned out was Argyle being on top for the second half of the first half, starting the second brightly, scoring through substitute Xavier Amaechi, and then being awarded a penalty for a foul on Bali Mumba.
Unfortunately for the Greens, Lorent Tolaj’s effort from 12 yards was saved and, perhaps an even bigger bugbear, Brendan Wiredu was fouled in the aftermath, but no further spot-kick was awarded.
From here, Reading added a late fourth and had their victory, but even with their numerical disadvantage, it felt a day where Argyle rued what might have been.
For Head Coach Tom Cleverley, there were a few areas to address as a root cause for falling so far behind, but also some reasons for positivity.
“We were pretty poor on the second phase of set-pieces today, and that led to the first goal,” Cleverley told Argyle TV. “We’ve been brilliant at that recently, being alive to those moments, but today we weren’t.
“It was a disastrous start, going down to 10 men after 12 minutes. From there, you have to stay in the game, draw it out, and make them feel nervous for as long as you possibly can, and we didn’t manage to do that.
“At 3–0 down, though, I thought the character, the quality, and the fight were outstanding. To pull it back to 3–1, then potentially 3–2 with the penalty – and for me, the rebound is a second penalty for sure – and then to keep going. Of course, we were open today. We gave it a right go and had to accept that we were going to be open in transition.
“I thought Reading were a good side. We knew we were going to face a good side, and I thought they proved that today. I’m really gutted for our supporters that they didn’t get to see two good teams really going at it, because the red card was responsible for changing that.
“When you see how we played for the last hour of the game, it just makes that 10–15 minute period even more frustrating. We’ll pick the bones out of it, but we’ve consistently overcome difficult obstacles this season. First, it was our away form. Then, it was the lack of clean sheets. We’re not at the bottom of either of those yet, but we’ve improved a lot.
“Now the last big obstacle we’ve got is this place. We need to get back to what this club was underpinned by for the two years before that. We’re managing to get points on the road now, which the club hasn’t done for two years, but this has to be a real source of serious points for us. Right now, that’s the final obstacle we need to overcome.
“It could have been something special. Tolly is one of the best finishers I’ve seen, certainly at this level and even above. He always practises where he’s going to put penalties the day before the game – he just didn’t make the contact he wanted. No problem with that.
“I’m not going to go too deep into the officiating, but I felt the punishment for our incident was a yellow card and a penalty – why was there no punishment for theirs? And the second penalty, for me, is stonewall. I’m disappointed with that, but I’ll try to focus on the positives.
“There’s a chance in just a few days’ time to go again.”
