Views After Plymouth Draw

‘Chance may have gone, but we thought that was the case last year against Walsall…’

‘Thought it was a cracking game. Just a pity we couldn’t sneak a goal.’

‘Excellent cup-tie, and probably our best performance of the season. Boyce and Newton were the best players on the pitch, despite the supposed better class of opposition. We’ve probably missed our chance to go through, but the gate receipts from the replay will be useful.’

‘Good game today and I think a draw was probably fair result. Seemed like a decent attendance today, didn’t catch it though?

I predicted 0-0 before the game and both teams perfectly demonstrated thier lack of attacking prowess. We could have played for days and not scored today, but it was still a great team performance.

The back 4 were superb today in particular Newton and Boyce. The only real threat we had all game was Newtons delivery into the box which was superb. He was my man of the match by some distance. Having said that it’s a worry that our best attacking option is coming from our left back.

The midfield were fairly decent as well. Jordan was well Jordan… He is what he is. Nolan was okay, pretty quite at times. Power ran his absolute socks off today and really showed some desire, he impressed me today. I can’t understand how Jordan lasted 90 minutes, he looked knackered with 20 minutes left. He was just left in no mans land and he let his runners go by. When Fofana came on he looked class and composed, how he’s not starting I don’t know?

Upfront is the issue. I felt sorry for Tomlinson as his role had quite heavy defensive duties today but he’s not that defensively minded and often a the full back ghosted pasted him. But he put in a lot of effort as he always does. The main concern was how isolated we were going up front. With Wright upfront by himself so often there was no support or options. In fact often players would have the ball and no one would be within 5-10 meters of them. We’re never going to score if that’s the case. It’s very frustrating!

Anyway I think it was a decent result against a poor Plymouth side a league above us, good to see some hard tackles going in! Nice to get a replay for the extra money, however I think we’ve missed our boat. at least we’re in the draw for the next round!’

‘Our performance today really reminded me of the one against Walsall at SB last year. So much better than our Football League opponents, so much better than many of our league performances in the respective seasons. But we don’t have Jamie Taylor to chip one in from the edge of the box anymore, and that is the big difference.

The football we played today was good. We got it down on the deck and put some good passing moves together, although we’re still far too reliant on crosses. I commend Simmo for today’s tactics (some guy in front of me on the way out was moaning on about Simmo ‘setting up defensively for an FA Cup tie’ – don’t know what he’s on about) and I hope that we take them into the league (it’s baffling that Simmo thinks that today’s tactics wouldn’t be as effective in the league were actually they’d probably be more effective). His subs – or the first two at any rate – were unusual, particularly considering how badly Wright was playing. But on the whole, kudos to our manager today.

The result means a) that we’re in tomorrow’s draw, b) that we get a bit of extra money, c) that we now have a long, arduous, tiring trip down to Home Park a week on Tuesday and d) that we are probably going out now. We missed our chance today.’

‘If we play like that for the rest of the season I’ll be happy. Newton was ridiculously good, he will be a league player before very long at all.’

‘Thought both teams generally cancelled each other out and were good defensively, adequate in midfield and poor in attack. We had one chance, they had two, but Farman didn’t need to make a save whereas Cole’s pulled out a worldie from a Wright header at the near post.

Shows how poor both teams are going forward that in the final 20 minutes the game opened up and both opted to effectively empty the midfield to try and get a goal yet were still terrible even when the defence were outnumbered.

Took us 20 minutes or so to get to grips with Reid but they looked very reliant on him.

Plymouth’s right side will be having nightmares about Newton tonight. Exceptional display, again.

Again, though, we come back to the point on an Oliver/Taylor. They’d both love playing in this team I think, particularly Oliver who just wanted to head anything that moved.’