One Game at a Time: You’re Only Here for the Relish (Henderson’s)
The Wednesday (A) Tuesday March 5th
League One reunion week ends with the long, well medium long to Argyle fans, trip to South Yorkshire, and our old stomping ground, or in the case of Cooper the Keeper, being stomped on, ground of Hillsborough.
In the roller coaster season that has become Argyle’s 23/4 voyage, Saturday saw a disappointing conclusion to a promising two and half hours that had taken in an unexpected win at Boro and then a visit from the surprise package, at least to the relegated Premier League trio, of Ipswich Town.
Amongst the various attempts to stir up a faux rivalry, to two clubs that, other than a single race to the third-tier title, have managed to more or less exist in perfect disinterest and a reasonable amount of common bonding over the love of Paul Mariner, some credit has to go to the Town fans. They, I think effectively closed the door on it with their chant of “two nil to the runners up”, after Keifer Moore sealed what in the end was a comfortable two nil win to secure a return to second place for the time being. It’s what they do. It was never a rivalry of their choosing that the press, as so often, chose to focus on the team they had heard of more frequently, but who, despite their astonishing run-in form, could never quite shake off, or in the end, catch Argyle. As both clubs achieved their primary goal of promotion, it’s a footnote in history.
Note to the Argyle choirmasters as well. “League One Champions, you’ll never be that” doesn’t really work as a) they have been and b) it was when League One Champions was, in effect, just Champions.
It will doubtless also amuse the pedants that they only managed to take the lead by a deflection so huge from Chaplin’s wayward shot off Brendon’s knee that they can stop moaning about the minutest flick that Bali’s equaliser at Portman Road. Well, at least until the next one.
With the current round of matches completed and some bizarre results recorded, Town still have a decent shot at the automatics, with Leicester managing to hit a three in a row streak of defeats, including two at home, and Leeds, perhaps feeling the exhaustion of their epic voyages to the Southwest, managing a paltry two shots on target in a one all draw against a Huddersfield side down to ten men for almost an hour.
The net effect of all these results is that we now have a division where six points cover twelfth to twenty third. Watford, who remarkably persist with Valerian Ishmael, in contravention of all previous experience of the Hertfordshire mob rule that averaged about three managers a season before this, lead this half a division of over the shoulder watchers. Indeed, Sunderland and Cardiff could easily be pulled into the gravitation black hole, especially the Black Cats, who have lost four in a row and Jack Clarke to injury for a month or more to boot.
The most recent form sides at the foot of the table include Millwall, two from two under new old boss Harris, QPR, where the ball and chain on Ilias Chair’s ankle is not slowing him down to any great extent in their three consecutive wins, and, because of course, tonight opponents Sheffield Wednesday, with four wins in five, including three in a row, despite also receiving two red cards in that run.
Argyle, as the doom-sayers have wasted no time in pointing out with relentless monotony, whilst having a comfortable number of teams between them and the relegation trapdoor, have a slimmer cushion than they would like, or perhaps deserve. The fact that clubs above them like recent victims Middlesbrough are looking nervously at their upcoming fixtures means there is no room for complacency. That late equaliser by Coventry could indeed end up being the Kitching sink for Argyle.
In effect Argyle have eleven matches in which they simply have to equal or out-perform two of the teams below them. With a division where almost anyone can seemingly beat anyone, that is easier said than done. Some fans are harking back to the 2012/13 season when the relegation mark was an astonishing fifty-four points for Peterborough, and Leicester’s current total would have seen them one win off being promoted already, and the current top four already assured of the play-offs. Saturday’s opponents Ipswich sixty points that season saw them only make it to fourteenth place.
Wednesday, still in twenty-third, have closed the gap on the clubs above them, and with Stoke heading to Elland Road will be hoping for a result that allows them to leapfrog at least their Pottery rivals and, temporarily at least as they don’t meet Cardiff until Wednesday, Huddersfield Town, who have consistently occupied an all-Yorkshire bottom three until the gatecrashing Stokies arrived.
With Rotherham, who even if they doubled their points tally to date in their final eleven games, would still be drawn down to League One like a dwarf planet into a black hole, seemingly doomed, and therefore doubtlessly, as per football legend, beginning to play with the freedom of the Barcelona of Suarez and Messi, those two final places will be fiercely contested.
That said this is not the worst state Argyle have found themselves in heading to Hillsborough. In 2011, rock bottom and shedding players as the club was forced to enter administration, Argyle travelled to S6 with a cobbled together squad, missing the suspended Chris Clarke, and facing former defensive lynch-pin Reda Johnson in what was without question the end of the worst week in Argyle history. What followed was the most unexpected of away wins, as Bondz N’Gala scored his only Argyle goal, followed by two from Joe Mason and a Bolasie finale. Following this up with a home win against also doomed Swindon meant Argyle recorded three wins at a time when they needed them most. Sadly, the record books show that it was not to be enough, and Argyle went down to the fourth tier for the first time in their history.
That the fall from grace was to be the precursor to the new ownership that has built and delivered the club we have today was hard to imagine at the time, but that was the eventual outcome. Our new Chairman joins a substantial number of American led investments in the league pyramid, from the TV and movie inspired Wrexham Dragons, right up to the EPL dominating Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City (partly) and even Manchester United, despite the arrival of a UK billionaire to try and regenerate their glory years.
Given the franchise-based nature of sports team ownership in the US, one does wonder, other than the immense profits they doubtless hope to make from the investments, if the American owners truly grasp the concept of promotion and relegation. You would have to argue that Birmingham showed a scant disregard for the evidence when discarding their manager for Wazza, and then jettisoning him double quick. That said it is looking more and more like a single tier system when the newly promoted sides from the Championship seem to, in the main, spend their time as the whipping boys of the Division they aspired to, having been too good for the Division they seem destined to be returned to.
The three most recently promoted clubs occupy the three bottom Premier league places. Burnley have managed only one home win in the League this season, and that was against their fellow promoted side Sheffield United. If they are then replaced by the three sides that were relegated in their stead, we are getting close to that perfect closed shop that more closely resembles the NFL or the NBA.
If the Championship represents perhaps the best of competition in the League pyramid, it is therefore perhaps not surprising that the EFL is seeking to utilise a growth in interest in the division in those territories such as the USA who have gradually begun to see the Championship as a steppingstone to the EPL. That is perhaps one reason why only six clubs remain in effective British ownership, and why so many clubs effectively spend what they cannot afford in the hope that they might sup from the golden teat of the EPL riches for a season or maybe two if they are very lucky.
The impact of the revised Championship TV rights deal mean that this is the wrong season to fall out of the division. Whilst all the clubs that stay up will benefit more or less equally, conferring no great advantage to any one of them in the internecine competition of the League, the gap to the yo-yo clubs, of which it seems Rotherham are the cheerleaders aspiring to escape League One will be greater than it ever has been.
Sport needs competition, but it also needs the ability to shock. In boxing it was said a good big’un will always beat a good little’un, but within their respective weight categories a fighter would have what was termed a punchers chance. More and more we have lost the ability to see, for example, a Southampton or Sunderland coming out of the second tier to win a major trophy like the FA Cup.
In our current division we have a team that won the Premier League within the last ten years, and which, despite hiving off hundreds of millions of pounds of talent on relegation, until two weeks ago, looked to be leading a procession back to the Premier League with a budget and wage bill that clubs like Argyle could never compete with.
Which is why, after dusting ourselves down from a defeat to a team we have competed with as more or less equals for a couple of seasons, I cannot help but hope that Ipswich act as a disrupter for the order of things. That Luton, with their pokey ground and seat depth that Ryan Air can only dream of claw their way to safety and build for another season.
To do that we need to take on a side that, after the worst possible start to a season, is led by an owner with no more idea of how to engage with his fans than the two lucky golden elephants he has placed outside the club entrance, but who has lucked onto a coach in Danny Rohl, who seems to be building something. Tonight, he will be apparently watched by Hansi Flick, the former Germany and Bayern Munich manager, and Rohl’s mentor from his time in Germany.
Argyle will be buoyed by having, in all probability, a full squad to choose from, and the chance to do the double over a side we comfortably despatched in Rohl’s early tenure, including the first goal from Bundu.
Argyle’s keeper, whoever is selected, will be doubtless relieved that past nemesis Windass won’t be dispensing his own special form of challenge, as he did against Mike Cooper in last season’s corresponding fixture. It wouldn't be a bad game for Morgs to get back on the scoring horse.
A win would settle the nerves of the restless. A draw will keep that gap and eat up another fixture.
Hold on folks. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Wednesday (A) Tuesday March 5th
League One reunion week ends with the long, well medium long to Argyle fans, trip to South Yorkshire, and our old stomping ground, or in the case of Cooper the Keeper, being stomped on, ground of Hillsborough.
In the roller coaster season that has become Argyle’s 23/4 voyage, Saturday saw a disappointing conclusion to a promising two and half hours that had taken in an unexpected win at Boro and then a visit from the surprise package, at least to the relegated Premier League trio, of Ipswich Town.
Amongst the various attempts to stir up a faux rivalry, to two clubs that, other than a single race to the third-tier title, have managed to more or less exist in perfect disinterest and a reasonable amount of common bonding over the love of Paul Mariner, some credit has to go to the Town fans. They, I think effectively closed the door on it with their chant of “two nil to the runners up”, after Keifer Moore sealed what in the end was a comfortable two nil win to secure a return to second place for the time being. It’s what they do. It was never a rivalry of their choosing that the press, as so often, chose to focus on the team they had heard of more frequently, but who, despite their astonishing run-in form, could never quite shake off, or in the end, catch Argyle. As both clubs achieved their primary goal of promotion, it’s a footnote in history.
Note to the Argyle choirmasters as well. “League One Champions, you’ll never be that” doesn’t really work as a) they have been and b) it was when League One Champions was, in effect, just Champions.
It will doubtless also amuse the pedants that they only managed to take the lead by a deflection so huge from Chaplin’s wayward shot off Brendon’s knee that they can stop moaning about the minutest flick that Bali’s equaliser at Portman Road. Well, at least until the next one.
With the current round of matches completed and some bizarre results recorded, Town still have a decent shot at the automatics, with Leicester managing to hit a three in a row streak of defeats, including two at home, and Leeds, perhaps feeling the exhaustion of their epic voyages to the Southwest, managing a paltry two shots on target in a one all draw against a Huddersfield side down to ten men for almost an hour.
The net effect of all these results is that we now have a division where six points cover twelfth to twenty third. Watford, who remarkably persist with Valerian Ishmael, in contravention of all previous experience of the Hertfordshire mob rule that averaged about three managers a season before this, lead this half a division of over the shoulder watchers. Indeed, Sunderland and Cardiff could easily be pulled into the gravitation black hole, especially the Black Cats, who have lost four in a row and Jack Clarke to injury for a month or more to boot.
The most recent form sides at the foot of the table include Millwall, two from two under new old boss Harris, QPR, where the ball and chain on Ilias Chair’s ankle is not slowing him down to any great extent in their three consecutive wins, and, because of course, tonight opponents Sheffield Wednesday, with four wins in five, including three in a row, despite also receiving two red cards in that run.
Argyle, as the doom-sayers have wasted no time in pointing out with relentless monotony, whilst having a comfortable number of teams between them and the relegation trapdoor, have a slimmer cushion than they would like, or perhaps deserve. The fact that clubs above them like recent victims Middlesbrough are looking nervously at their upcoming fixtures means there is no room for complacency. That late equaliser by Coventry could indeed end up being the Kitching sink for Argyle.
In effect Argyle have eleven matches in which they simply have to equal or out-perform two of the teams below them. With a division where almost anyone can seemingly beat anyone, that is easier said than done. Some fans are harking back to the 2012/13 season when the relegation mark was an astonishing fifty-four points for Peterborough, and Leicester’s current total would have seen them one win off being promoted already, and the current top four already assured of the play-offs. Saturday’s opponents Ipswich sixty points that season saw them only make it to fourteenth place.
Wednesday, still in twenty-third, have closed the gap on the clubs above them, and with Stoke heading to Elland Road will be hoping for a result that allows them to leapfrog at least their Pottery rivals and, temporarily at least as they don’t meet Cardiff until Wednesday, Huddersfield Town, who have consistently occupied an all-Yorkshire bottom three until the gatecrashing Stokies arrived.
With Rotherham, who even if they doubled their points tally to date in their final eleven games, would still be drawn down to League One like a dwarf planet into a black hole, seemingly doomed, and therefore doubtlessly, as per football legend, beginning to play with the freedom of the Barcelona of Suarez and Messi, those two final places will be fiercely contested.
That said this is not the worst state Argyle have found themselves in heading to Hillsborough. In 2011, rock bottom and shedding players as the club was forced to enter administration, Argyle travelled to S6 with a cobbled together squad, missing the suspended Chris Clarke, and facing former defensive lynch-pin Reda Johnson in what was without question the end of the worst week in Argyle history. What followed was the most unexpected of away wins, as Bondz N’Gala scored his only Argyle goal, followed by two from Joe Mason and a Bolasie finale. Following this up with a home win against also doomed Swindon meant Argyle recorded three wins at a time when they needed them most. Sadly, the record books show that it was not to be enough, and Argyle went down to the fourth tier for the first time in their history.
That the fall from grace was to be the precursor to the new ownership that has built and delivered the club we have today was hard to imagine at the time, but that was the eventual outcome. Our new Chairman joins a substantial number of American led investments in the league pyramid, from the TV and movie inspired Wrexham Dragons, right up to the EPL dominating Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City (partly) and even Manchester United, despite the arrival of a UK billionaire to try and regenerate their glory years.
Given the franchise-based nature of sports team ownership in the US, one does wonder, other than the immense profits they doubtless hope to make from the investments, if the American owners truly grasp the concept of promotion and relegation. You would have to argue that Birmingham showed a scant disregard for the evidence when discarding their manager for Wazza, and then jettisoning him double quick. That said it is looking more and more like a single tier system when the newly promoted sides from the Championship seem to, in the main, spend their time as the whipping boys of the Division they aspired to, having been too good for the Division they seem destined to be returned to.
The three most recently promoted clubs occupy the three bottom Premier league places. Burnley have managed only one home win in the League this season, and that was against their fellow promoted side Sheffield United. If they are then replaced by the three sides that were relegated in their stead, we are getting close to that perfect closed shop that more closely resembles the NFL or the NBA.
If the Championship represents perhaps the best of competition in the League pyramid, it is therefore perhaps not surprising that the EFL is seeking to utilise a growth in interest in the division in those territories such as the USA who have gradually begun to see the Championship as a steppingstone to the EPL. That is perhaps one reason why only six clubs remain in effective British ownership, and why so many clubs effectively spend what they cannot afford in the hope that they might sup from the golden teat of the EPL riches for a season or maybe two if they are very lucky.
The impact of the revised Championship TV rights deal mean that this is the wrong season to fall out of the division. Whilst all the clubs that stay up will benefit more or less equally, conferring no great advantage to any one of them in the internecine competition of the League, the gap to the yo-yo clubs, of which it seems Rotherham are the cheerleaders aspiring to escape League One will be greater than it ever has been.
Sport needs competition, but it also needs the ability to shock. In boxing it was said a good big’un will always beat a good little’un, but within their respective weight categories a fighter would have what was termed a punchers chance. More and more we have lost the ability to see, for example, a Southampton or Sunderland coming out of the second tier to win a major trophy like the FA Cup.
In our current division we have a team that won the Premier League within the last ten years, and which, despite hiving off hundreds of millions of pounds of talent on relegation, until two weeks ago, looked to be leading a procession back to the Premier League with a budget and wage bill that clubs like Argyle could never compete with.
Which is why, after dusting ourselves down from a defeat to a team we have competed with as more or less equals for a couple of seasons, I cannot help but hope that Ipswich act as a disrupter for the order of things. That Luton, with their pokey ground and seat depth that Ryan Air can only dream of claw their way to safety and build for another season.
To do that we need to take on a side that, after the worst possible start to a season, is led by an owner with no more idea of how to engage with his fans than the two lucky golden elephants he has placed outside the club entrance, but who has lucked onto a coach in Danny Rohl, who seems to be building something. Tonight, he will be apparently watched by Hansi Flick, the former Germany and Bayern Munich manager, and Rohl’s mentor from his time in Germany.
Argyle will be buoyed by having, in all probability, a full squad to choose from, and the chance to do the double over a side we comfortably despatched in Rohl’s early tenure, including the first goal from Bundu.
Argyle’s keeper, whoever is selected, will be doubtless relieved that past nemesis Windass won’t be dispensing his own special form of challenge, as he did against Mike Cooper in last season’s corresponding fixture. It wouldn't be a bad game for Morgs to get back on the scoring horse.
A win would settle the nerves of the restless. A draw will keep that gap and eat up another fixture.
Hold on folks. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
