One Game at a Time: You’re Only Here for the Past-ties
Stokealona (A) April 20th
It is the weekend Argyle fans have been waiting for since the turn of the New Year. Fitting that, as a roller coaster season trundles into its final few games, the team who are based on Alton Towers doorstep play host to an Argyle side looking to be their Nemesis. Both sides still desperate to beat the stomach-churning drop. One manager still hoping to prove to his new audience he is no Wicker Man. There is a lot at stake, but only one management team fears being burnt at it.
At this time of the season, much is spoken about the momentum and trajectory of the various sides. Argyle, having taken the momentous and unusually brutal step of replacing their Head Coach after less than three months in post, played the second of their recent Friday night fixtures, courtesy of Sky suddenly realising they needed to hit their quota of Westcountry visits, on the back of two unbeaten matches.
Limping into town, exhausted by their seemingly endless transcontinental journey, were previously runaway leaders of the Division, Leicester City. It was perhaps surprising that, given how much their manager Maresco had made of the tiredness such an unreasonable schedule imposed on them, he made only two changes from the side that lost at Millwall earlier in the week.
And for twenty minutes there was no doubting which side was the one with the multi million pound playing staff. Argyle chased shadows, survived an offside goal and generally played the game camped on the edge of their penalty area with only fleeting and temporary sights and touches of the ball. A goal was just a matter of time.
Then, after twenty-one minutes of one way traffic, Forshaw and Whittaker broke up play and played a neat exchange. Forshaw sent the ball wide left to Bundu, who advanced on the retreating Wout Faes. Faes allowed Bundu to march into the penalty area, and the Moose unleashed a perfectly shaped shot past Hermanson into the opposite side netting for what the BBC online reporter called “the most against the run of play goal in the history of football”.
Argyle had something to cling on to. And they clung. Faced with the zombie style of possession football beloved of Maresco and Russell Martin at the Saints, where the approaching hordes keep coming, but so slowly that you can usually avoid the worst-case scenario, until the undead have to regroup and do the exact same thing again, they battled. There were casualties. Miller looked to have incurred a season ending injury. But led by Scarr and Cooper, and with Gibson joining Galloway and Pleggy in a resolute back four for the last half hour, not even the introduction of Mr Punch himself, Jamie Vardy could break the Argyle resolve. That’s the way to do it.
Backed by a superb crowd, back to its raucous and hostile best, and urged on by a coaching team that demonstrated more passion at the final whistle than the most recently departed coach managed in his eighty-seven days, a win that few expected was placed in the back pocket and, for the second Saturday in a row, we could all sit back and watch the implosion of the sides above and around us.
Unfortunately, once again, the implosions taking place were all at the wrong end of the table. Leeds and Ipswich managed to extend their winless runs to three games each, and whilst Southampton did manage to capitalise, they needed a ninety-seventh minute winner, after casually tossing away a two-goal lead at home to Watford.
Blackburn’s scrabbled if not scrambled Szmodics winner at Elland Road, Millwall’s home resurgence against Cardiff, together with Swansea’s second home win in a week means that the 49/50-point mark is starting to be reached by some of the clubs who have teetered on the brink at various points in the season.
The only other winners in the bottom sides were Birmingham, whose three nil despatch of past tenants and perhaps FA Cup distracted Coventry clawed them back above the dotted line of doom only at the point of Huddersfield failing to see out an unexpected win at Bristol City. And that only when Rebecca Welch gave a one hundred- and first minute penalty to the home side, which Naki Wells, a former Terrier, gleefully plundered a point with.
QPR, themselves with a tricky run-in remaining are doubtless ruing their tossed away two points from Tuesday, as they crumbled to a comprehensive three nil loss at Hull. Hull remain on the fringe of the play-offs, which we could do without given the end of season game scheduled at Home Park. Preston are now probably out of the play-off running after Norwich smashed and grabbed a one-nil at Deepdale.
Saturday’s opponents Stoke travelled with four thousand fans to the Wendies and for an hour were basically battered by a side who have reverted to the style of play that eventually took them up last season. After Liam Palmer scored, Stoke threw on agent Cundle. First, he rescued a point, and denied the Wendies two, by striking a fine finish in front of the travelling Stokies who have been, shall we say, underwhelmed by his previous contributions. Then he had the presence of mind to interpose himself when a goal bound shot threatened a winner. Unfortunately for him, it would have been a Stoke winner, but the final score meant both sides missed the chance for three vital points.
The net effect means that Argyle improved their position over three of the sides below them by two points each, and with all the slide rules and logarithm tables available, a win from one of the final three games should be sufficient to ensure the seasons target of beating our budget and the bookies by staying up will be achieved.
As fate would have it, the first chance we have to lessen the sale of anti nail chewing potions in the Devon and Cornwall area comes at the newly adopted home of our former manager and his tight knit group of Claudia Winkleman lookie-likies of his coaching staff, whose position on their arrival at the Bet 365 in December when they languished in nineteenth place with a minus nine goal difference has been transformed. To twentieth and minus nineteen.
It is quite the transformation, but perhaps not as much as the one between the two sides since Stoke fatefully slipped out of the Premier League in 2017/18, a season where, if the Adams surge had not run out of steam for Argyle, it could have seen the clubs meeting up the following season.
Argyle, the following season, when finally taken under the financial wing of Simon and Jane Hallett, suffered a relegation back to the basement division. Stoke, a financial behemoth compared to many of the Championship sides they faced were widely favoured to go straight back up, with new boss Gary Rowett (he sounds familiar) overseeing a thirty million pound spend with an influx of players to replace the outflow that, if you looked far enough down the list past the Shaquiri to Liverpool, Crouch to Burnley and Choupa-Moting to PSG, also featured one Dom Telford being snapped up by the management team at Bury to help drive the Lancashire clubs promotion ambition. Despite the spend, the side struggled after a poor start, and Rowett was replaced by Nathan Jones, but finished the season in a frankly disappointing sixteenth place.
Jones, or “Mad Nath” as he is affectionately known in the Potteries, was similarly unsuccessful, and the club has since entered a cycle of caretaker/new manager/failure repeat, all the while consistently ending the season in the lower half of the Championship.
This is all the more remarkable given the financial backing of the Coates family, one of the wealthiest in the UK, and the fact that they managed to be relegated with a squad, which drove the Stokalona nickname, full of players who would with other clubs either have reached or would reach Champions League semi-final and final glory, including a fair few that were Champions League Winners.
Indeed, the difference between the two clubs, now operating at the same level, if not with the same philosophy, is that Argyle spent roughly the same amount on transfer fees last financial year as Stoke spent on agents’ commissions on their transfer fees.
You might think that when Simon Hallett says he believes there is the opportunity to do things smarter than traditional clubs have done, he might almost have had a specific club in mind. For a club to get relegated with seven (and with Arnautovic it could have been eight) players reaching the latter stages of the premier European cup competition in their squad, then something is rotten somewhere.
It used to be the measure of the Premier League mentality of players, to ask could they do it on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke? Given the last hundred and eleven years have been a period devoid of any wins at Stoke for Argyle the answer would appear to be, for us, no. Not since just before World War One, when goals from Bertie Bowler and Jack Bell secured an Argyle win for the first and only time on Stoke territory. The best we can point at would be a League Cup goalless draw and replay win at Home Park in the first League Cup semi-final run. The worst was literally that. A nine nil drubbing in 1960. The striker for Stoke who recorded a hat-trick that day, Johnny King, is now ninety one. So probably only on the bench on Saturday. Budge up Niall.
On the other hand, we do know from within the last twelve months that a fine day in the Potteries can be a springboard for a great day out for Argyle and their fans. I am sure Vale and their supporters will be willing us on the rekindle the derby game next season for them if we can. It's the least we could do for their fine hospitality.
A sold out away end will be boisterous and raucous and the players will need no more incentive to perform than the words which were bandied around the press conferences about the opportunity that was the Bet365.
In truth, all that matters is that final step to safety for Argyle. Where that final point or three comes from is, in the grand schemes of things, purely academic.
After all, Stoke still have games at Southampton and at home to Bristol City to secure their future if they cannot do so on Saturday.
What happened in the past will stay there. Argyle fans who recall the faux rivalry that existed with Joe Kinnear and Luton Town, will also be aware that his recent death was greeted with muted reaction and respect and sober reflection.
We have new hands on the wheel. Safe hands as well. We hope for even better to come once our future has been secured.
What happens in other more northern territories are not our concern. We will await the fixture list next season and for sure some games will stand out more than others.
As for former employees who elect to move on, who knows what next season will bring, if anything. It is, however, perhaps worth noting, that 2025 is the Year of the Rat.
This. This is just another game. Another three points we want to win.
Beyond that, nothing exceptional.
Safe travels. Maybe watch Layer Cake on the trip back if you get the chance.
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stokealona (A) April 20th
It is the weekend Argyle fans have been waiting for since the turn of the New Year. Fitting that, as a roller coaster season trundles into its final few games, the team who are based on Alton Towers doorstep play host to an Argyle side looking to be their Nemesis. Both sides still desperate to beat the stomach-churning drop. One manager still hoping to prove to his new audience he is no Wicker Man. There is a lot at stake, but only one management team fears being burnt at it.
At this time of the season, much is spoken about the momentum and trajectory of the various sides. Argyle, having taken the momentous and unusually brutal step of replacing their Head Coach after less than three months in post, played the second of their recent Friday night fixtures, courtesy of Sky suddenly realising they needed to hit their quota of Westcountry visits, on the back of two unbeaten matches.
Limping into town, exhausted by their seemingly endless transcontinental journey, were previously runaway leaders of the Division, Leicester City. It was perhaps surprising that, given how much their manager Maresco had made of the tiredness such an unreasonable schedule imposed on them, he made only two changes from the side that lost at Millwall earlier in the week.
And for twenty minutes there was no doubting which side was the one with the multi million pound playing staff. Argyle chased shadows, survived an offside goal and generally played the game camped on the edge of their penalty area with only fleeting and temporary sights and touches of the ball. A goal was just a matter of time.
Then, after twenty-one minutes of one way traffic, Forshaw and Whittaker broke up play and played a neat exchange. Forshaw sent the ball wide left to Bundu, who advanced on the retreating Wout Faes. Faes allowed Bundu to march into the penalty area, and the Moose unleashed a perfectly shaped shot past Hermanson into the opposite side netting for what the BBC online reporter called “the most against the run of play goal in the history of football”.
Argyle had something to cling on to. And they clung. Faced with the zombie style of possession football beloved of Maresco and Russell Martin at the Saints, where the approaching hordes keep coming, but so slowly that you can usually avoid the worst-case scenario, until the undead have to regroup and do the exact same thing again, they battled. There were casualties. Miller looked to have incurred a season ending injury. But led by Scarr and Cooper, and with Gibson joining Galloway and Pleggy in a resolute back four for the last half hour, not even the introduction of Mr Punch himself, Jamie Vardy could break the Argyle resolve. That’s the way to do it.
Backed by a superb crowd, back to its raucous and hostile best, and urged on by a coaching team that demonstrated more passion at the final whistle than the most recently departed coach managed in his eighty-seven days, a win that few expected was placed in the back pocket and, for the second Saturday in a row, we could all sit back and watch the implosion of the sides above and around us.
Unfortunately, once again, the implosions taking place were all at the wrong end of the table. Leeds and Ipswich managed to extend their winless runs to three games each, and whilst Southampton did manage to capitalise, they needed a ninety-seventh minute winner, after casually tossing away a two-goal lead at home to Watford.
Blackburn’s scrabbled if not scrambled Szmodics winner at Elland Road, Millwall’s home resurgence against Cardiff, together with Swansea’s second home win in a week means that the 49/50-point mark is starting to be reached by some of the clubs who have teetered on the brink at various points in the season.
The only other winners in the bottom sides were Birmingham, whose three nil despatch of past tenants and perhaps FA Cup distracted Coventry clawed them back above the dotted line of doom only at the point of Huddersfield failing to see out an unexpected win at Bristol City. And that only when Rebecca Welch gave a one hundred- and first minute penalty to the home side, which Naki Wells, a former Terrier, gleefully plundered a point with.
QPR, themselves with a tricky run-in remaining are doubtless ruing their tossed away two points from Tuesday, as they crumbled to a comprehensive three nil loss at Hull. Hull remain on the fringe of the play-offs, which we could do without given the end of season game scheduled at Home Park. Preston are now probably out of the play-off running after Norwich smashed and grabbed a one-nil at Deepdale.
Saturday’s opponents Stoke travelled with four thousand fans to the Wendies and for an hour were basically battered by a side who have reverted to the style of play that eventually took them up last season. After Liam Palmer scored, Stoke threw on agent Cundle. First, he rescued a point, and denied the Wendies two, by striking a fine finish in front of the travelling Stokies who have been, shall we say, underwhelmed by his previous contributions. Then he had the presence of mind to interpose himself when a goal bound shot threatened a winner. Unfortunately for him, it would have been a Stoke winner, but the final score meant both sides missed the chance for three vital points.
The net effect means that Argyle improved their position over three of the sides below them by two points each, and with all the slide rules and logarithm tables available, a win from one of the final three games should be sufficient to ensure the seasons target of beating our budget and the bookies by staying up will be achieved.
As fate would have it, the first chance we have to lessen the sale of anti nail chewing potions in the Devon and Cornwall area comes at the newly adopted home of our former manager and his tight knit group of Claudia Winkleman lookie-likies of his coaching staff, whose position on their arrival at the Bet 365 in December when they languished in nineteenth place with a minus nine goal difference has been transformed. To twentieth and minus nineteen.
It is quite the transformation, but perhaps not as much as the one between the two sides since Stoke fatefully slipped out of the Premier League in 2017/18, a season where, if the Adams surge had not run out of steam for Argyle, it could have seen the clubs meeting up the following season.
Argyle, the following season, when finally taken under the financial wing of Simon and Jane Hallett, suffered a relegation back to the basement division. Stoke, a financial behemoth compared to many of the Championship sides they faced were widely favoured to go straight back up, with new boss Gary Rowett (he sounds familiar) overseeing a thirty million pound spend with an influx of players to replace the outflow that, if you looked far enough down the list past the Shaquiri to Liverpool, Crouch to Burnley and Choupa-Moting to PSG, also featured one Dom Telford being snapped up by the management team at Bury to help drive the Lancashire clubs promotion ambition. Despite the spend, the side struggled after a poor start, and Rowett was replaced by Nathan Jones, but finished the season in a frankly disappointing sixteenth place.
Jones, or “Mad Nath” as he is affectionately known in the Potteries, was similarly unsuccessful, and the club has since entered a cycle of caretaker/new manager/failure repeat, all the while consistently ending the season in the lower half of the Championship.
This is all the more remarkable given the financial backing of the Coates family, one of the wealthiest in the UK, and the fact that they managed to be relegated with a squad, which drove the Stokalona nickname, full of players who would with other clubs either have reached or would reach Champions League semi-final and final glory, including a fair few that were Champions League Winners.
Indeed, the difference between the two clubs, now operating at the same level, if not with the same philosophy, is that Argyle spent roughly the same amount on transfer fees last financial year as Stoke spent on agents’ commissions on their transfer fees.
You might think that when Simon Hallett says he believes there is the opportunity to do things smarter than traditional clubs have done, he might almost have had a specific club in mind. For a club to get relegated with seven (and with Arnautovic it could have been eight) players reaching the latter stages of the premier European cup competition in their squad, then something is rotten somewhere.
It used to be the measure of the Premier League mentality of players, to ask could they do it on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke? Given the last hundred and eleven years have been a period devoid of any wins at Stoke for Argyle the answer would appear to be, for us, no. Not since just before World War One, when goals from Bertie Bowler and Jack Bell secured an Argyle win for the first and only time on Stoke territory. The best we can point at would be a League Cup goalless draw and replay win at Home Park in the first League Cup semi-final run. The worst was literally that. A nine nil drubbing in 1960. The striker for Stoke who recorded a hat-trick that day, Johnny King, is now ninety one. So probably only on the bench on Saturday. Budge up Niall.
On the other hand, we do know from within the last twelve months that a fine day in the Potteries can be a springboard for a great day out for Argyle and their fans. I am sure Vale and their supporters will be willing us on the rekindle the derby game next season for them if we can. It's the least we could do for their fine hospitality.
A sold out away end will be boisterous and raucous and the players will need no more incentive to perform than the words which were bandied around the press conferences about the opportunity that was the Bet365.
In truth, all that matters is that final step to safety for Argyle. Where that final point or three comes from is, in the grand schemes of things, purely academic.
After all, Stoke still have games at Southampton and at home to Bristol City to secure their future if they cannot do so on Saturday.
What happened in the past will stay there. Argyle fans who recall the faux rivalry that existed with Joe Kinnear and Luton Town, will also be aware that his recent death was greeted with muted reaction and respect and sober reflection.
We have new hands on the wheel. Safe hands as well. We hope for even better to come once our future has been secured.
What happens in other more northern territories are not our concern. We will await the fixture list next season and for sure some games will stand out more than others.
As for former employees who elect to move on, who knows what next season will bring, if anything. It is, however, perhaps worth noting, that 2025 is the Year of the Rat.
This. This is just another game. Another three points we want to win.
Beyond that, nothing exceptional.
Safe travels. Maybe watch Layer Cake on the trip back if you get the chance.
COYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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