Miron Muslic

Muslic gives honest assessment of QPR loss

Miron Muslic left the home dressing room at Home Park having spoken to his players after their 1-0 defeat at home to Queens Park Rangers, and his first port of call was to speak to Argyle TV.  

Asked what he thought of the game in which he saw his Pilgrims lose for the first time, he said: “A terrible performance.” 

It was a stark, honest assessment from the Head Coach, at the conclusion of a whirlwind first week in the job. On Tuesday night, he seemed content with his new charges as they drew 1-1 at home to Oxford United but, after this loss, he could not hide his disappointment.  

The only goal of the game came from Rangers just after the hour mark, with Rayan Kolli finishing after Daniel Grimshaw – far and away Argyle’s best player – had made an excellent save to deny Ilias Chair. From there, Argyle rarely looked like getting back in the game.  

“We were far away from deserving anything today,” said Muslic, expanding on his initial statement.  

“The message to the team was that we have to realise the situation we are in - and we are in this situation together. The only way out of this is to compete, to challenge, to win duels and to show that we can be physical. 

“Today we lacked that. It was a much-deserved victory for QPR, and that hurts.  

“I said this to the team: the only guy who performed on a normal level today was Daniel - and that's a problem. If, in a home game, your best player on the pitch is consistently the goalkeeper, then we're doing something wrong.   

“I said at half-time, if you want to have a chance to get out of this game and to earn something, we need to be competitive in duels first. It's not about tactics, it's not about style of play, it's not about the system - It's about the desire to win a duel and we lacked that today.” 

Argyle continue to be hurt by injuries, with Brendan Galloway the latest to miss out, but Muslic refused to allow the queue at the treatment table to be any kind of get-out for the way the QPR game unfolded.  

“I don't like excuses at all,” he said. “Today, we still had a competitive team on the pitch. We still had enough game-changers on the bench with quality. It's up to us. We have to learn, and we have to learn very, very quickly. All of us.  

“Right now, we are on the ground. The only possibility, and the only way to get up, is we have to do this collectively as a team, as Argyle. We have to take our own responsibilities, every single one of us. Then, we can be competitive, and then we have a chance to reach the goal we have - to stay up.  

“We, as staff, will try everything possible to reach a hand to the lads, so we can get up and then we can go again. We have to accept this situation, and it's all about finding solutions for this.  

“[The fans] deserve better than we performed today and maybe have performed collectively as an organisation over the last six months. 

“We are down right now, and the only way is up. The most important thing for me is just to accept this situation. It's an urgent situation. We have to realise that. For that, you need to get up and be ready to fight.”