Argyle’s 5-2 win over Cardiff City felt like a long time in the workings.
The Pilgrims, in the short-term, came into this game with two strong victories in succession, but searching back over the entire season, it has taken until into the final third of fixtures for them to really get rolling.
In contrast, Cardiff have been at it since the start. They beat Argyle 4-0 earlier in the season, and deserved every bit of that scoreline. They came to Home Park top of the league, and unbeaten in 12. But, they got brushed aside by Tom Cleverley’s resurgent charges.
The first half was manic. The game went from 0-0 to 3-1 in a seven-minute spell, with Lorent Tolaj and Bim Pepple putting the Greens two up, Omari Kellyman getting one back, before Pepple scored again. Kellyman got his second – a pearler, by the way – to make it 3-2 at the interval.
Argyle were superb after the break. Against a capable Cardiff team, who knew they needed more goals, Cleverley’s men were resolute, and when Tolaj scored a penalty, the game was finally out of City’s hands. Mathias Ross’s headed fifth added salt to Welsh wounds.
Pepple’s two goals take his seasonal tally to 11 goals. Eight of those have come in his last nine games, five in the last four. Tolaj, meanwhile, took his number to 18 for the campaign (17 of those for Argyle), with the two men combining beautifully in tandem. And, in all of that, the match sponsors selected Joe Edwards as man of the match – the ovation that announcement got from the Home Park crowd suggested they agreed. The captain was immense.
Speaking of the crowd, they were up for this from the off. So were Cardiff’s sell-out away end, and the combination of the swollen attendance, the noise from the stands and quality on the pitch made this feel like a high-end Championship encounter, never mind League One.
“It was outstanding,” Cleverley told Argyle TV after the game. “The players really delivered today. I'm so proud of them, the work they've put in to build up to a performance like that against a top opponent. The best atmosphere we've experienced and our best result. A really good day at the office.
“It was a brave game plan today, and the players had to be brave to deliver it. It's the type of game plan that, if you lose a duel or you lose a 1v1, you're opened up. They did it a couple of times to us, and we paid the price, certainly on one occasion, but the turnovers and what that was creating for us, on the front foot, the territory on the pitch, the chances and transitions - it was worth the risk.
“This is how I want my teams to play. There's one thing I took from Sir Alex [Ferguson], you don't want a bored crowd. They've suffered that a little bit this year, and we had [to play in a different style] to grind out some results. We don’t want to concede a goal at that end – even of that quality - but I did think ‘this is football, this is entertainment, this is edge-of-your-seat’ and thankfully it's us that's come out on the right side.
“It's been one of the big reasons for the turnaround, the system change that gets two strikers into the team. Two really productive players who have got a lot to their game, in and out of possession. The fact that the pair of them got braces and didn't get man of the match pays credit to our skipper!
“We spoke about it in the week that we're always better against the teams that come out, and Cardiff don't play any games to draw. They come out, they try and attack you and they will be expansive.
“We've been successful against those teams. Now, what we need to do here, is the teams that sit in a little bit more, Mansfield in the second half, Wimbledon: these games, That's the final piece where we can break those teams down and really suffocate those teams. Then we'll be winning a lot more than we're losing here.”
