One Game at a Time: Difficult Second Season?
Preston North End (h) October 26th
We live in a binary world. Some might argue it was ever thus but more and more we reduce a complex problem or decision or outcome to a binary one. Brexit or Remain? Tory or Labour.? Badenoch or Jenrick? Can you remember a decision that was important that wasnât a binary one. Trump or Biden superseded by Biden or Harris to give us Trump or Harris?
Does it work? Well, Truss v Sunak was a binary choice and Truss won, so you tell me. But living in a binary world also means we live in an angrier one. Or so it seems and even the relatively sedate fora of football supporters soon become a place where the voices want to compete for the loudest complaint, the earliest derision for a player or the quickest trigger finger for the manager/coach.
Let me be clear. Opinions matter, but having an opinion doesnât make you correct, just as someone having a contrary position doesnât make you wrong. According to my brief internet search on this there are apparently fifty shades of grey, although then something called parental controls stopped me from finding out what they were.
I wonât spend an in-depth time reflecting on Wednesday, at the Den of Iniquity that is the New Den. Suffice to say the first twenty seconds were the best, followed by ninety plus minutes of not so great. A penalty awarded and taken away in the time it takes a linesman to raise a flag. Right or wrong, those are the breaks of a side struggling to put together a coherent away performance.
Shades of Gray again as he made his debut, looking as rusty as a recently recalled ship of the desert. Opinions vary, but my local Millwall fan reckoned Whitaker was our best player, always looking dangerous. Sources closer to home think he needs a rest or dropping or shipping out. The question being to be replaced by who? Hardie showed again why the cross in the air is not the best way to get the best from him. Mumba again showed the defensive fallibility that can be overlooked when he is bombing forward.
And Millwall did what Millwall do. Grab a goal, kill the game and churn out a one nil win. Binary you see. There is a thought process behind these ramblings.
So not wanting to dwell on this particular defeat, I took a limp down memory lane and recalled the spurious claim made by football fans that a two nil lead is the most dangerous score in football. Upcoming opponents Preston demonstrated this pseudo law when they blew a two goal home lead against Norwich before boarding the Riddler Express Sleeper to the West for todays game.
The truth is, thatâs rubbish. For a fan the worst score, and the most dangerous is the binary one of one nil. Because whichever way it goes it fills the fans on both side with hope
At one nil up or down, no matter how one sided the game and how well or hopeless the display, you are always only one second, one worldie or one Matt Butcher/Stewart Houston/Ken McNaughton own goal away from a head in hands or disbelieving pile on from a changed result. A point saved or two points dropped, all in the blink of an eye.
One nil is never supposed to be the final score. What do the press say when the goal goes in? Argyle have their opening goal. Or have conceded the opening goal. It is never, never, one nil and that's it. End of the action and the scoring. Except that for the fan whose side trails or leads that is where the torment begins. You donât believe me? Here are a few examples from my own personal litany.
Letâs start with a good one. April 1975 and twenty three and a half thousand Argyle fans (and possibly some Col U ones, but where, you will never know) pack Home Park as Argyle seek the win that will promote them. Itâs as one horse a race as you could imagine, but Argyle, with Mariner and Rafferty, are stymied by a stubborn United who have their own near forty goal strike force of Svarc and Froggatt probing away.
Eventually the tidal wave breaks through, and a Rafferty cross is tapped home by Mariner. As the dour Scot said afterwards of his strike partner, âAye, from two yards with no keeper, heâs magic.â And yet still the comfort of that second goal was denied, and a crowd, desperate for the win, gutterally, got behind the players, all the time metaphorically watching through their fingers, and expecting the worst. The final whistle lost in a surge of joyous Pilgrims onto the pitch.
Why the worry? Go back to September. An Argyle side struggling to buy a win away from home, clinging on by their home fingernails to their third tier status. An epic trip across country to deepest Essex marmalade country. Afirst half dismissal (Peter Darke, remarkably only for kicking the ball away and an obstruction), and the few coaches of loyal pilgrims willing their team to hang on to a valuable and first away point of the season, watched on until injury time.
Then, because of course, Mick Packer, a full back pings a perfect thirty yarder into the top corner, Equally of course, his first ever (and likely best ever) Colchester goal. One nil. Game over. No time to respond. Seven hours back on the coach to dwell on it.
Binary. A personal hell. March 1978 and skiving from my Polytechnic degree course, a cheap midweek day return to Walsall. Spend the afternoon browsing the Midland Football progamme shop and spend some more of my grant on some worthless paper that is probably still in my garage nearly fifty years later (wants list checked).
Get to the ground where I am accosted by a middle-aged local couple. Season ticket holders who gave them up when the club sold Brian Taylor to Argyle they are there to watch him as he has comped them but have a spare and want it to go to an Argyle fan. Result for the impoverished student. You think?
Sitting in the stand, amongst the home fans. Less than two minutes in and Alan Buckley scores his twenty fifty goal of the season, putting him twelve behind the Argyle squad for the season. No problem, eighty-eight minutes to save a point. A final hurrah for Mariner make-weight Terry Austin, thought to be off in the next twenty four hours as the transfer window slams TM shut.
It is not to be, and so begins a train journey home strewn with cancellations and delays that results in me going straight to Drakes Circus and the Poly to fall asleep in a law lecture.
Argyle after that game were in the relegation zone, pursued by Bradford City, whose own binary experience was exactly a month previous, when they led at Home Park after an hour and to those foolhardy enough to brave the cold, were never seriously in trouble. A McNiven debut goal early and a typically lunatic punch by Mick Horswill that left Argyle with ten men saw hope limping away with frostbite. But the snow continued, along with an icy wind, so strong that one goal kick was almost returned for a corner before a defender intervened. Ron Crabb, yes, an Exeter based ref, allegedly had a frozen watch and exposure when he abandoned the match, expunging the game from the records if not the memory. By the time the rearranged fixture arrived Argyle were safe, City were down and a sunny six nil home romp ensued. From Mayday, Mayday to May Day mayhem.
Argyleâs visitors today, the now Lowe-less Preston North End secured a one nil win last season, the penultimate home game of the hapless Ian Fosterâs reign, played in a poisonous atmosphere. They will arrive this season without their scorer that day, Miller, who effectively did the double over Argyle last season. Also missing, and hopefully meaning their attack lacks bite will be the suspended Osmajic. The final missing part of the matchday jigsaw will be oddly clad Argyle fans in French maid outfits, which, were they included in the basket of goods measured for CPI, could have had a very positive effect on inflation pre next weekâs budget.
Foster went after the following home match, also a binary defeat to Bristol City, and there is the rub. Why do binary scores matter so much?
For Argyle it is because, alongside QPR, they are one of two sides yet to record a clean sheet this season in the Championship. So, for Argyle, until they fix this flaw, this season binary equals defeat. Four of them so far. Away from home, scoring goals is the problem, with only a Whittaker wonder strike at QPR to cling to.
At home we can score, so conceding is the issue. Because if we donât score this season, we loseâŚ.and in an ever compressed and congested table there are fewer and fewer teams below us to lean on.
Coventry need to beat Luton heavily this lunchtime (or let Luton escape with a point or more) to avoid Argyle being in the bottom three by kick off. QPR have the long trip to Burnley, scene of a binary defeat for Argyle a few weeks back, and a side who have lost once in just over fifty championship home games.
That was of course to a winless Rangers, led by the hapless and hopeless Ainsworth, but who avoided a seemingly inevitable relegation with a late and undeserved two-one away win.
Time to dig deep, build on that home form and put right some of the problems we are facing.
To paraphrase the North Bank at Highbury, what price a chant of Go Westâs âOne-nil, to the Argyle!â at full time?
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Preston North End (h) October 26th
We live in a binary world. Some might argue it was ever thus but more and more we reduce a complex problem or decision or outcome to a binary one. Brexit or Remain? Tory or Labour.? Badenoch or Jenrick? Can you remember a decision that was important that wasnât a binary one. Trump or Biden superseded by Biden or Harris to give us Trump or Harris?
Does it work? Well, Truss v Sunak was a binary choice and Truss won, so you tell me. But living in a binary world also means we live in an angrier one. Or so it seems and even the relatively sedate fora of football supporters soon become a place where the voices want to compete for the loudest complaint, the earliest derision for a player or the quickest trigger finger for the manager/coach.
Let me be clear. Opinions matter, but having an opinion doesnât make you correct, just as someone having a contrary position doesnât make you wrong. According to my brief internet search on this there are apparently fifty shades of grey, although then something called parental controls stopped me from finding out what they were.
I wonât spend an in-depth time reflecting on Wednesday, at the Den of Iniquity that is the New Den. Suffice to say the first twenty seconds were the best, followed by ninety plus minutes of not so great. A penalty awarded and taken away in the time it takes a linesman to raise a flag. Right or wrong, those are the breaks of a side struggling to put together a coherent away performance.
Shades of Gray again as he made his debut, looking as rusty as a recently recalled ship of the desert. Opinions vary, but my local Millwall fan reckoned Whitaker was our best player, always looking dangerous. Sources closer to home think he needs a rest or dropping or shipping out. The question being to be replaced by who? Hardie showed again why the cross in the air is not the best way to get the best from him. Mumba again showed the defensive fallibility that can be overlooked when he is bombing forward.
And Millwall did what Millwall do. Grab a goal, kill the game and churn out a one nil win. Binary you see. There is a thought process behind these ramblings.
So not wanting to dwell on this particular defeat, I took a limp down memory lane and recalled the spurious claim made by football fans that a two nil lead is the most dangerous score in football. Upcoming opponents Preston demonstrated this pseudo law when they blew a two goal home lead against Norwich before boarding the Riddler Express Sleeper to the West for todays game.
The truth is, thatâs rubbish. For a fan the worst score, and the most dangerous is the binary one of one nil. Because whichever way it goes it fills the fans on both side with hope
At one nil up or down, no matter how one sided the game and how well or hopeless the display, you are always only one second, one worldie or one Matt Butcher/Stewart Houston/Ken McNaughton own goal away from a head in hands or disbelieving pile on from a changed result. A point saved or two points dropped, all in the blink of an eye.
One nil is never supposed to be the final score. What do the press say when the goal goes in? Argyle have their opening goal. Or have conceded the opening goal. It is never, never, one nil and that's it. End of the action and the scoring. Except that for the fan whose side trails or leads that is where the torment begins. You donât believe me? Here are a few examples from my own personal litany.
Letâs start with a good one. April 1975 and twenty three and a half thousand Argyle fans (and possibly some Col U ones, but where, you will never know) pack Home Park as Argyle seek the win that will promote them. Itâs as one horse a race as you could imagine, but Argyle, with Mariner and Rafferty, are stymied by a stubborn United who have their own near forty goal strike force of Svarc and Froggatt probing away.
Eventually the tidal wave breaks through, and a Rafferty cross is tapped home by Mariner. As the dour Scot said afterwards of his strike partner, âAye, from two yards with no keeper, heâs magic.â And yet still the comfort of that second goal was denied, and a crowd, desperate for the win, gutterally, got behind the players, all the time metaphorically watching through their fingers, and expecting the worst. The final whistle lost in a surge of joyous Pilgrims onto the pitch.
Why the worry? Go back to September. An Argyle side struggling to buy a win away from home, clinging on by their home fingernails to their third tier status. An epic trip across country to deepest Essex marmalade country. Afirst half dismissal (Peter Darke, remarkably only for kicking the ball away and an obstruction), and the few coaches of loyal pilgrims willing their team to hang on to a valuable and first away point of the season, watched on until injury time.
Then, because of course, Mick Packer, a full back pings a perfect thirty yarder into the top corner, Equally of course, his first ever (and likely best ever) Colchester goal. One nil. Game over. No time to respond. Seven hours back on the coach to dwell on it.
Binary. A personal hell. March 1978 and skiving from my Polytechnic degree course, a cheap midweek day return to Walsall. Spend the afternoon browsing the Midland Football progamme shop and spend some more of my grant on some worthless paper that is probably still in my garage nearly fifty years later (wants list checked).
Get to the ground where I am accosted by a middle-aged local couple. Season ticket holders who gave them up when the club sold Brian Taylor to Argyle they are there to watch him as he has comped them but have a spare and want it to go to an Argyle fan. Result for the impoverished student. You think?
Sitting in the stand, amongst the home fans. Less than two minutes in and Alan Buckley scores his twenty fifty goal of the season, putting him twelve behind the Argyle squad for the season. No problem, eighty-eight minutes to save a point. A final hurrah for Mariner make-weight Terry Austin, thought to be off in the next twenty four hours as the transfer window slams TM shut.
It is not to be, and so begins a train journey home strewn with cancellations and delays that results in me going straight to Drakes Circus and the Poly to fall asleep in a law lecture.
Argyle after that game were in the relegation zone, pursued by Bradford City, whose own binary experience was exactly a month previous, when they led at Home Park after an hour and to those foolhardy enough to brave the cold, were never seriously in trouble. A McNiven debut goal early and a typically lunatic punch by Mick Horswill that left Argyle with ten men saw hope limping away with frostbite. But the snow continued, along with an icy wind, so strong that one goal kick was almost returned for a corner before a defender intervened. Ron Crabb, yes, an Exeter based ref, allegedly had a frozen watch and exposure when he abandoned the match, expunging the game from the records if not the memory. By the time the rearranged fixture arrived Argyle were safe, City were down and a sunny six nil home romp ensued. From Mayday, Mayday to May Day mayhem.
Argyleâs visitors today, the now Lowe-less Preston North End secured a one nil win last season, the penultimate home game of the hapless Ian Fosterâs reign, played in a poisonous atmosphere. They will arrive this season without their scorer that day, Miller, who effectively did the double over Argyle last season. Also missing, and hopefully meaning their attack lacks bite will be the suspended Osmajic. The final missing part of the matchday jigsaw will be oddly clad Argyle fans in French maid outfits, which, were they included in the basket of goods measured for CPI, could have had a very positive effect on inflation pre next weekâs budget.
Foster went after the following home match, also a binary defeat to Bristol City, and there is the rub. Why do binary scores matter so much?
For Argyle it is because, alongside QPR, they are one of two sides yet to record a clean sheet this season in the Championship. So, for Argyle, until they fix this flaw, this season binary equals defeat. Four of them so far. Away from home, scoring goals is the problem, with only a Whittaker wonder strike at QPR to cling to.
At home we can score, so conceding is the issue. Because if we donât score this season, we loseâŚ.and in an ever compressed and congested table there are fewer and fewer teams below us to lean on.
Coventry need to beat Luton heavily this lunchtime (or let Luton escape with a point or more) to avoid Argyle being in the bottom three by kick off. QPR have the long trip to Burnley, scene of a binary defeat for Argyle a few weeks back, and a side who have lost once in just over fifty championship home games.
That was of course to a winless Rangers, led by the hapless and hopeless Ainsworth, but who avoided a seemingly inevitable relegation with a late and undeserved two-one away win.
Time to dig deep, build on that home form and put right some of the problems we are facing.
To paraphrase the North Bank at Highbury, what price a chant of Go Westâs âOne-nil, to the Argyle!â at full time?
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Last edited:
