After witnessing one of the most remarkable games in Argyle history, Argyle Media team member Rob McNichol reflects on the Greens’ 1-0 win over Liverpool, and the emotions around the historic encounter…
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I don’t really like penalties.
Actually, that’s not true. I love them, especially when they are awarded for us, but I find it tricky to process their sensation.
I guess it is a bit like how some people talk about VAR taking the emotion out of a goal, at times. Personally, I don’t always buy that. Obviously, a goal being ruled out is a bit of a choker, but the reaffirmation of a goal is a fun moment, as is when you think you have conceded, and the opposition’s goal gets chalked off.
Anyway, this is off topic. We are not talking VAR; when will we ever have to worry about VAR? (Oh wait, that’s right – in Round Five.) No, we’re talking penalties.
And not just any penalty. A penalty for Argyle, at the Babcock Devonport End. Against *checks notes* Liverpool. Or, to give them their full name, The Mighty Liverpool (TML).
I guess this might be me trying to justify why I didn’t celebrate Ryan Hardie’s goal that beat TML on Sunday. It certainly wasn’t through any lack of delight, but more because when a penalty is awarded to Argyle, in my head it is most of the way to being scored. I can’t celebrate the penalty award wholly, because it hasn’t been scored yet, but, when it is taken, I find I will feel only reinforcement of the contentment, if it is scored, or utter disappointment, if it is not.
There is also the personal aspect. I know Ryan Hardie. I’ve known him a few years, got to know him through working with him, and having seen him miss a spot kick at Chelsea three years ago, I really didn’t want him to miss again.
He didn’t. He dispatched with the coolness of a well-chilled can of Irn-Bru, and Argyle led the Reds. Home Park erupted. I sat still, visibly unmoved, my insides in turmoil, my visage tranquil.
In the heaving press box, I turned to my colleague Alex and, before Liverpool restarted the tie, I asked him, tongue pressed firmly in cheek: “when’s the fifth-round draw?”
I was joking. This had been a fun story so far, but we were not yet two-thirds of the way into the game. Most likely, the international superstars of the league leaders would find their range, hit their stride, and we would have an another one of those tales we have, where we play a big team in the FA Cup, have some fun moments, and then watch as the juggernauts roll on.
But, for once, the truck stopped here. It’s long been a bit of a bugbear, a piffling quibble, of mine, that a lot of our big-game memories over the years, especially in the cup, have been defeats.
I know there is West Brom, and Derby (twice), and so on, but typically we talk lovingly of Karl Duguid’s strike at Arsenal – but we lost. Macaulay Gillesphey’s goal and then the rearguard action at Chelsea was admirable – but we lost. Ultimately, we lost to Watford (twice), we lost to Liverpool in 2017 (after a replay), we lost to Everton in 1989 (another replay).
This time, whatever happens in the next round – and don’t worry, we’ll get to that – we have this huge, monumental memory of a win, against a side we can describe, not even hyperbolically, as perhaps the best team in the world, and undoubtedly one of the most popular, and most famous.
Incidentally, Alex did not answer my question. Not right away. He realised I was essentially joking, but as time ticked away, this fanciful notion that when the numbered spheres were to be emptied into the tumbler, we might actually care what number came next, or perhaps immediately before.
Approximately 82 minutes into the game, when another Liverpool pass from the back sailed over the heads of Reds forwards and Greens defenders alike, and out for a goal kick, Alex leaned over and said: “It’s at 7.10pm on Monday night. During The One Show.”
And so it was. And we all tuned in, and it mattered. And this daft story of 2024/25 took another whimsical twist.
We remarked how different Bill Bailey looks without his long, straggly hair. She seems a nice woman, but we didn’t really care about Sara Cox’s new podcast. We didn’t need to hear two questions for Theo Walcott and Alex Scott. We just wanted to see ball number 10, and who it might be adjacent to.
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We’ll come back to that. Firstly, we need to address a few players that need a bit of shine.
Let’s start with a moment for a player from before the game began. In a match filled with cosmopolitanism, where 20 different footballing nations were represented in the playing squads - and another couple if you add the bosses – the man who walked Argyle out was from our own fair city.
It’s not a token – Adam Randell has earned that armband. This club has needed people to step up in recent weeks, and he has done that. He always does. On this day, he led out the team he supports, the team he grew up with, onto the Home Park turf against Liverpool, on what turned out to be one of the club’s most famous days. Good on you, Rands.
On the topic of schoolboy dreams, how about red-bred Callum Wright, once a Liverpool mascot in a Champions League semi-final, charging around Home Park like a demon, devoted to the Green cause? For the first time in his 24-and-a-bit years, he was happy to see Liverpool lose.
Speaking of which, Conor Hazard’s Liverpool-mad father had probably gone even longer being devoted to wanting the Reds to conquer, but he’d have been as proud as any – no, actually, way prouder – when his boy Conor denied Diogo Jota and Darwin Nunez in succession, repelling £150m of talent like a thoroughbred dismissing an irksome blue bottle with dismissive flick of its tail.
Ok, perhaps I am exaggerating. They were brilliant saves. “It’s my job,” said Conor, with the air of understatement akin to Mo Farah saying his job was to jog around the block a few times. Maybe we need to meet somewhere in the middle.
Maksym Talovierov and Nikola Katic, the Bebop and Rocksteady of Plymouth Argyle, understandably took the eye, and rightfully got plenty of plaudits, but it is worth a tip of the Cordovan hat to Julio Pleguezuelo. I heard a few references to ‘Argyle’s two centre-backs’, which is more than a little unfair to Pleggy, who was outstanding on Sunday, and has been very often of late. Don’t you dare leave him out.
From Pleggy, to teggies, and a few words for big Katic. I would throw plenty of compliments his way, but he would probably just head them clear.
His commitment to clearing everything extended to freeing some space in his lower mandible by nutting Randell’s arm, the brute. In doing so, Katic became my second favourite ever gap-toothed Argyle player. (Sorry, Niko, but remind me to explain to you about Steve McCall before your loan runs out).
Ryan Hardie. The same Ryan Hardie whose 12-yarder was beaten away, meaning a heart-rending loss at Stamford Bridge. I choose generally to remember that in tandem with the fact that he scored a hat-trick three days later, but that isn’t saying the Chelsea miss hadn’t festered just a little.
Missing a penalty against Liverpool could have opened old wounds. Instead, he bagged, and did an ill-advised knee slide that instead busted open his knee scab. Time heals some wounds, TCP works best for others.
And then there is Matty Sorinola, a buzzsaw of a wing-back, impossible to dislike, of whom the worst thing is that our fans don’t finish his song properly (I’m begging you to find a final line to “We’ve got *clap, clap* Sorinola.” Suggest: ‘number twenty-niiiiiiine’).
Matty’s tackle on Luis Diaz was my highlight of the game. Thrilling in its efficacy, and its suddenness, but also, crucially, tactically superb. Sorinola read the play, glanced twice at the Colombian star’s projected run, covered his central defenders, and won the ball to rousing acclaim.
He also poleaxed Jota at one point and got rightfully booked. That got a cheer, too, mind. Basically, anything that halted Liverpool did so.
Nine minutes of added time were signalled; should have been about five, felt like five days. But when (goalkeeper) Caoimhin Kelleher headed into the hands of (goalkeeper) Conor Hazard, that was it.
Well, that was it for the game. Plenty of the above names got the nod from my colleagues and I in the media team that people would be interested in speaking to them.
From when the whistle blew, up until Monday evening as I type this, Conor has spoken to Argyle TV, BBC Radio Ulster and TalkSport, as well as a post-match ITV interview with Nikola Katic, where expletives fell from Niko’s mouth like, well, his teeth; Ryan Hardie spoke to the BBC world feed, ESPN, a press conference teeming with local and national journalists, BBC Spotlight, the FA Cup Review Show and BBC Scotland; Miron Muslic to ITV (twice), Argyle TV, the press conference, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Radio 4, BBC Spotlight, Sky Sports News and Austrian TV station ORF; Julio Pleguezuelo was even on ESPN Argentina (“we need a Spanish speaker, Rob. Have you got one?”).
And those are just the ones we said ‘yes’ to. There were probably more than double the number of requests to which we said ‘no’, because rightfully the focus had to quickly switch to Millwall on Wednesday night, which is our biggest game of the season. And then, after that, the biggest game will be the next one. And then the next…
Each of the Argyle representatives who were asked to speak on behalf of the club did so, brilliantly. And we should include those asked to speak before the game, too, with Jordan Houghton, Victor Palsson, Tymoteusz Puchacz and, in particular, Callum Wright, all doing their bit to speak to various outlets.
Joe Edwards even went on a podcast hosted by Joe Cole and Ashley Cole, to discuss the Brentford win and the upcoming Liverpool tie. Their in-studio guest was Stuart Pearce, but he would hardly know anything about redemption stories after missing penalties now, would he?
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Immediately after the win against Brentford, we were asked by someone representing a media outlet at the ground if we would have any plans for players and/or fans to gather round to watch the draw the following day, and could a camera come along?
We politely declined, partly because no, there wouldn’t be, but also because we, frankly, felt a little bit irked. There is no doubt that Argyle beating Brentford was a shock, for various reasons, not least the respective home and away form of the pair, but surely it was not all that seismic, was it? This was not a National League side upsetting the big boys, it was a team in their second year in the second tier.
Brentford are a club to be hugely admired. They have worked out an ethos, managed themselves tremendously, have a brilliant, erudite manager and deserve to be where they are. But it does not feel, to me at least, like they are streets ahead of Argyle, at least not historically. It will take us a lot of work, and patience, to get to where they deservedly are, but historically I’m not sure the two clubs are that different, certainly in terms of fanbase.
Theirs is a model I am sure we admire, but are they that many figurative levels above us? Not for me.
Liverpool, though. Now we’re talking. There is big, there is Premier League big, there are giants, and then there is Liverpool.
It is fame and renown on the epicest scale. A scale so epic that I just made up the word ‘epicest’.
Every football fan in every country knows them. However they are performing, they are legitimately one of the biggest clubs in the world, perhaps rivalled only by Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona. And I don’t think beaten by any.
All that was true 15 to 20 years ago, when Liverpool were (by their standards) often quite ordinary. Now, they are dismissively cruising past rivals to justifiably claim to be the best in the country, and the continent, maybe the world.
And we beat them. WE beat them.
Go on, I dare you: say ‘plucky Plymouth’ because the alliteration and assonance sounds so good; say ‘Pilgrims progress’ because it is by far the most accessible platitude available to you at short notice; say ‘David beat Goliath’ if you wish, even if some scholars reckon that David essentially used a gurt big trebuchet rather than a Dennis the Menace-style slingshot.
This time, it is probably fair to comment on the disparity in the teams. Forget pleasing statistical notions such as bottom of one league and top of the other, we’re talking football clubs almost on different celestial plains.
But this weekend it was our star that shone.
Despite my putting the boot into common cliché above, I will admit that I concluded Sunday’s match report by straying into the familiar old territory of using a Beatles pun for a game involving Liverpool. But when I’m at Home Park, everything seems to be right.
Some Might Say that Oasis rather styled themselves on the Beatles. Some would be harsher, and say they Definitely ripped them off. Others say Maybe. But Whatever.
Now, Argyle’s Magical, improbable Mystery Tour will take in another north-western city, another known as a powerhouse in both football and music, and we will face another team more than Half a World Away.
If we wish, we can head to Manchester City and choose to be overawed, but I suspect we won’t. I suspect Maxi might stand before Erling Haaland, and after a brief period of looking at him like that infernal Spiderman meme, try to challenge him. Then, that will be replicated all over the park. We will go there, and we will have a real go. If we have to, we will look both Noel and Liam in the eyes, and tell them that our favourite Gallagher is Paul.
Frankly, we’ll probably get beaten. But we’ve said that before.
Liverpool fans will tell us that one doesn’t walk alone. Man City’s will suggest they saw us standing alone. They can’t both be right.
Actually, we’ll give the nod to the former. Because one day soon, thousands of Pilgrims will not be alone as they meet Sky Blue with a sea of green.
With a dream in our hearts.
