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Any concerns about the upcoming season?

Forest of Dean Green

āœ… Evergreen
Mar 5, 2009
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Gloucestershire
Iā€™ve absolutely no idea until Iā€™ve seen them in anger in a competitive game. Funnily enough, my worry this year is about scoring goals whereas last year it was conceding them. Getting the ball to our strikers. Lack of striking options unless we get a signing. Will Jeffers rediscover his form etc? Who really knows?
 
Feb 15, 2005
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No concerns at all as I havenā€™t seen our new recruits and this team play yet. Iā€™m hopeful we will have a great season and Iā€™m delighted to be able to go home matches.
 

Dorset Green

āœ… Evergreen
Feb 8, 2009
1,203
787
Bridport
My two concerns are whether we will be better playing out from the back when the opposition presses us high up the pitch and whether Ryan Hardy (or Luke Jephcott) will be clinical enough alongside Niall Ennis. I do think we will finish the right side of half-way up the table.
 
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Jul 28, 2020
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Itā€™s the time of year to be optimistic....but unfortunately I just donā€™t see enough goals in the side, for us to be challenging this season.

previous comparable, successful sides had goals and flair in their front four, which we just donā€™t have:

holloways side had the likes of Hayles, Eubanks Blake, halmosi, Sinclair.

Tony waiters outfit had Johnson, McCauley, mariner, Johnson.

we have ( in my opinion) only Ennis and broome who have the right combination of flair and goals in them.

mayor has only ever scored 34 goals in 350 games, and camara ( who is currently being used in the right wing) is never going to score enough goals, in my opinion, to justify his right wing berth- he has only scored 12 goals in 153 games.

I like what Chris errington said in a recent article :
ā€œ I think if Argyle are going to have success playing 3-5-2 they are going to have to score plenty of goalsā€.... and thatā€™s really the point, there are just not ā€œplenty of goalsā€ in this team.

To reach the play offs weā€™re going to need 75-80 goals ( as opposed to 53 last term), and with the current squad, I donā€™t see that happening.

Thereā€™s the hope that Lowe will bring in at least one ( in my opinion he needs two)attacking players, and hopefully that happens....
 

davie nine

R.I.P
Jan 23, 2015
7,785
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Plympton
I know a lot of people like Ryan Lowe. Iā€™m not so keen myself however IF we get off to a poor start, is it fair to include the end of last seasons poor form when judging him?
I hope he proves me wrong but Iā€™m convinced heā€™s the man to progress us any further.
I think that you need to review your last paragraph. There appears to be a negative missing.
 
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Aug 11, 2013
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Why are you dragging up quotes like it is exposing Ryan Loweā€™s judgement?

Heā€™s hardly going to say ā€œwell this young defender is raw and not exactly the best, they say he is a defender but he canā€™t really head very well, but I spent all my wage budget getting Hardie back and giving Jephcott and Cooper decent new contracts to stop them leaving, so weā€™re a bit desperate now. Anyway welcome Jerome.ā€

We all know what we saw of our defending last season and Ryan Lowe saw it too. The change in recruitment strategy is evident, proven and experienced lower league defenders, not academy graduates on their first coach trip.

We conceded so many soft goals last season it was remarkable. No one is suggesting our defence is fixed, but there is no way we will have that soft underbelly and naivety that was painful to watch.

We wonā€™t have the best defence in the division, but hopefully we wonā€™t have one of the worst either. That in itself will be a big improvement.
Woods is number 35 on Palaceā€™s website?

If Lowe was overdoing his comments perhaps he should be more circumspect in the future.

My point is that these 3 arenā€™t duffers who have now been released by their parent clubs and perhaps thereā€™s more to our defensive frailties than changing personnel or do people think that will go trick ?
 
Aug 5, 2016
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Woods is number 35 on Palaceā€™s website?

If Lowe was overdoing his comments perhaps he should be more circumspect in the future.

My point is that these 3 arenā€™t duffers who have now been released by their parent clubs and perhaps thereā€™s more to our defensive frailties than changing personnel or do people think that will go trick ?

Judge them by how many first team appearances they have, not how long they are held on for.

If Opoku, Watts and Woods are on Ā£500 - Ā£5000 a week, it is loose change to Premier League clubs.

What those three lads have which is valuable to Premier League clubs is youth and a British passport, which is handy when they need to meet a homegrown quota via their bench players. It doesnā€™t make them the next Rio Ferdinand when they arenā€™t released. They can afford to keep them around a while, especially when most seasons, lower league clubs are queuing up to borrow them and pay a big percentage of their wages anyway.

Everton released a defender this summer who is about to turn 27 in October. He has been at Everton all his life. He left having made a grand total of 7 appearances for Everton, had 7 loan spells at other clubs and this summer signed for Shrewsbury Town.

Does 8 professional seasons at Everton mean he is a Premier League player now playing in League One, or does the fact that he is now at Shrewsbury mean he was a League One level player who has had 8 seasons far above his level?

For me it is the latter, and Iā€™ll be gobsmacked if any of the defenders at Argyle last season end up proving themselves in the top division. Sadly because of finances, the top 20 clubs can afford players to hang around the club in the background that wonā€™t amount to a great deal. I wouldnā€™t read too much into what Newcastle and Fulham might think of Watts and Opoku, just judge with your own eyes what you saw last season. They arenā€™t even close to Premier League players.
 

davie nine

R.I.P
Jan 23, 2015
7,785
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Plympton
Woods is number 35 on Palaceā€™s website?

If Lowe was overdoing his comments perhaps he should be more circumspect in the future.

My point is that these 3 arenā€™t duffers who have now been released by their parent clubs and perhaps thereā€™s more to our defensive frailties than changing personnel or do people think that will go trick ?
It is quite possible that more than 1 of the players that you mentioned will have successful football careers at some level but there is no hiding the fact that they were all inexperienced when they were with us last season and that, when things went wrong, as a group, they were unable to cope.
RL was right to praise them to the press as there was no suggestion that any of them lacked commitment.
He made the mistake in not having experience in the middle of his defence, he realised that and has taken steps to rectify the situation.
Yes, I feel confident that his new, more experienced defence will ā€˜do the trickā€™ if that was what you meant in your last paragraph.
Tin hat on in case we concede 3 or 4 goals at Rotherham tomorrow.
 
Jul 24, 2009
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I find it really hard to predict what this season will look like, harder than usual. There's two schools of thoughts:-

A preview in the Times today has us to go down and says we have had a busy but underwhelming summer in the transfer market, lost 11 of the last 15 and conceded 80 goals last time.

The flip argument is we were 2/3 of a decent side last season and looked like we could challenge for if not a play-off place a top half finish, but were undone by a woeful defence which has since been completely rebuilt, and the likes of Camara, Ennis, Jephcott, Hardie will benefit from last years experience in League One this time.

For me I really am not sure but I tend to the view that a combination of lessons learned and a stronger defence could reasonably see an improvement to say 12th. Anything more than that towards the play-offs would be a huge jump from 18th, not unheard of (e.g. Shrewsbury a few years back) but very rare. The big issue, as others have said, is strength in depth. That does need to be addressed or I fear we will struggle.
 
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