Argyle suffered a 3-2 defeat to Lincoln City on Saturday afternoon at the LNER Stadium.
Tom Bayliss handed the Imps the lead in the game within six minutes, with a James Collins brace putting the hosts three goals ahead by the 65th minute.
A change of approach saw some success for Argyle, however. Owen Oseni and Xavier Amaechi got the Greens within one goal, and even despite Brendan Wiredu’s sending off late on, Argyle pushed for an equaliser, but in the end fell just short.
Head Coach Tom Cleverley was disappointed with his side’s overall performance before looking ahead to an important tie at Home Park against Leyton Orient on Tuesday evening.
“[Today was] a huge disappointment,” he told Argyle TV. “It's a game that I felt was there to be won. We’re in a moment, whether it's confidence or scarring from what's happened previously, that we don't want to take that game away from the opponent. We're waiting for them to land the first blow, and then, today came the second and third blow, where I thought we were really poor at the start of the second half.
“Then we start playing when there seems to be nothing to lose. That's a mentality I need to address. Sometimes, when you get to a certain level of football, if you let the opponent land the first blow, it’ll just be too far out of your reach. Today, that was the case; we only got going when we felt freedom, and now there's nothing to lose. That's a mentality that we all need to address.
“It’s a difficult scenario to recreate where you’re on top of games, which I thought we were at Bolton, in the week against QPR, and which I thought we did fairly well today, and then that first chance for the opposition ends up in the back of your goal. We need to get our thinking caps on to how we can recreate those scenarios to make us better. It's high-alert defending and doing the basics well. If the ball ends up in row Z in the first five to 10 minutes, then so be it. We're giving ourselves mountains to climb, and yet again today it was one too far.
“I still think, although it is a longer process, that there's certain things we need to do as a team to make sure that we pick up points along the way, and we're not doing that at the minute.
“For me, it's a positive for the supporters that came and followed us today, that they had something to shout about. They had a bit of hope to hold on to but, for me, it should not mask over the issues. We have some significant issues at the moment that we all need to work hard in solving.”
Now, Argyle look ahead to a midweek clash against Leyton Orient at Home Park. Cleverley admits that work will be done to try and rectify the performance from Saturday afternoon, and try and pick up an important first league win of the season.
He said: “I think, first of all, it's got to be an acceptance of where we are. Okay, all the relegated teams are expected to bounce straight back up, but it’s absolutely not [easy]. I think if you look back historically over the last three or four years, it's very difficult to bounce straight back up to the Championship from League One. We have to accept where we're at. There’s no given right to go and win that game on Tuesday. We have to make that happen.
“We’ll work really hard to change that mentality, as well as get all the basics together for Tuesday, and it should mean that we start picking up points fairly quickly.”
