Tom Cleverley has given his reaction to the opening match of the Sky Bet League One season, his first competitive game as Argyle's Head Coach.
Barnsley won the game 3-1, with all three goals feeling preventable from an Argyle perspective. The first cannoned in off Brendan Wiredu, and the second could have been dealt with long before Adam Phillips’ admittedly crisp finish.
Caleb Watts, who thought he had put Argyle in front early in the game, only for it to be ruled out for a foul, scored a legitimate goal to get the Greens right back in it just after half-time, but even after Jack Shepherd was sent off for the visitors, Argyle could not find an equaliser. Instead, Davis Keillor-Dunn capitalised on another defensive mix-up to slot home the third goal, which put the game beyond doubt.
“There’s a lot of regrets after that one, if I'm being honest,” said Cleverley. “We prepared so hard for this occasion, six weeks of real graft from everyone involved. The things we've seen in pre-season, and worked on in pre-season, unfortunately didn't come out today.
“I’m talking more without the ball than with the ball. We have to defend with a bit more conviction than we did.
“It could have been a different occasion had the goal not been chalked off, which I thought was harsh, but today was all about us not showing enough conviction in our defensive work. We shouldn't be conceding the quality of chance we did.
“At half-time, I felt there was a genuine belief that we could go on and win the game. We showed that, we scored straight away. The tempo was high. We kept recycling attacks and there was a little bit of a stage that they would manage the time well, and we made some forced errors and that just all breaks momentum.
“We need to be cleaner at that position, and what you certainly can't do is concede any big chances against, especially when they're down to 10 men. That, we didn't do well enough.
“We had enough openings, opportunities, and not enough good play around their box. We maybe didn't test the goalkeeper as much as we'd like, and then we just shot ourselves in the foot again with a really cheap third goal to concede.
“The message to the players is, it’s three points out of 138. That's all it is.
“If it affects your mentality, then it could be a negative. If we learn from it and implement that, then it could be a positive exercise there. If you look at it as 92 points needed to get promoted, you've got 46 to drop. Today we've dropped three.”
