Plymouth Argyle head coach Tom Cleverley has called on his players to take accountability as they head into the weekend on the back of successive defeats.
The Pilgrims entered last weekend top of League One as they prepared to welcome promotion rivals Huddersfield Town to Home Park. A disappointing performance followed, with Martin Drury’s side leaving Devon with a comfortable 2-0 win.
A trip to Stevenage on Tuesday represented an opportunity to bounce back at the first time of asking. However, they were second best throughout the encounter and fell to a 3-0 defeat.
It was a pair of fixtures which left Cleverley seething. In his post match interview at the Lamex Stadium, he accused his players of lacking fight, whilst apologising to the supporters who made the trip.
Recent Blip Leave Plymouth Playing Catch Up
The past week has seen Plymouth surrender the top spot and fall to fifth in the table. They’ve also played more games than any other team in the top half, which means they could drop further once everyone else has caught up.
They were leapfrogged by newly promoted Cambridge United during the week, with the U’s moving up to fourth following a 2-2 draw with Wycombe Wanderers.
The pair are due to meet tomorrow afternoon at the Cledara Abbey Stadium, where Cleverley has vowed to find the solutions to Argyle’s recent woes. Speaking to club media, he said:
“Being a head coach, you understand that at some point these moments are going to come. It’s never plain sailing. You’re always going to have to put a couple of fires out, find solutions for big problems. That’s part and parcel of what I do.
“[It has been] a disappointing five days for us. It is football in a nutshell, how five days ago we would sit on top of the league and then fast forward to today, we’ve got some problems to find solutions for.
“We’ve not been good enough at the basics. That’s where you’ve got to start. We’ve not won enough duels, enough second balls, run hard enough. That’s for sure where we’ll start trying to solve the issues.
“I’ve complete faith in the players that we put out there on Saturday. We’ve overcome problems before, found solutions with flying colours, and I’m sure we’ll do the same again.”
Honest Conversations
It’s perhaps too early to class tomorrow’s fixture as a six-pointer, especially because Cambridge aren’t expected to seriously push for promotion come May. However, it’s important that Plymouth turn their recent blip around if they want to push for a top two finish.
Continuing, Cleverley admitted that there has had to be some honest conversations:
“We have to be honest with ourselves; that’s the first port of call, that we’re completely honest at what the problems are, take accountability as individuals and then as a team. Then it’s my job to offer complete clarity on how we fix things.
“We’ve always managed to overcome these issues. At the minute, we’re too open at the start of games. We’ve conceded the first goal in our last four. That’s an issue. We’ve not competed well enough. That’s been another issue.
“That’s a real small sample set. If you ask Orient or Blackpool ‘what’s an Argyle team?’, they’d say: ‘they compete well’. To judge the players, or tag them soft, that’s completely not true.
“It’s been two performances that are completely against the grain when it comes to us competing and doing the fundamentals.
“[I have] full faith in the players and the staff to make sure that we overcome these problems that are part and parcel of management.”
