Michael Duff ahead of Plymouth Argyle away

[Jon Palmer]

Interview here: https://bit.ly/DuffPreArgyleA

[horlickfanclub]

Nice of him to tell the supporters what we do not see.

[Shade]

Nice of him to tell the supporters what we do not see.

It's ok to disagree with MD sometimes. I certainly do when it comes to his answer about the booing.

"The easy thing is to think 'the crowd want us to whack it' and with respect you are booting it to George Lloyd and Alfie May, so we don't want to boot it." Then why does it go long to Alfie instead of the taller man so often? And why, when the ball is played long, are our forward on opposite sides of the pitch so there's no chance of winning a flick on? And, if that period of "play" was all a masterplan and we didn't want to go long to Lloyd or May, why did our first goal come about from a long ball out of defence that Lloyd, who is actually very good in the air, controlled on his chest and fought for? But I'm pretty sure nobody in the ground wanted them to whack it long, just show some kind of attacking intent, like Ramsey finally did when he turned his man and ran forward with the ball, to some cheers.

"When we get beaten 5-0 by Cambridge I understand the booing, but when there is half an hour or 20 minutes to go, the players stuck with what we wanted them to do." The crowd was reacting before it was too late to do anything about it and everyone had fallen asleep. Including the players.

"I said it after the game, sometimes you need a reality check that we can't disrespect the opposition , because they are fighting tooth and nail, just as we have been." Didn't matter who we were playing, Rotherham, Crewe, Man City or Bishops Cleeve - that was absolute, unimaginative dross during that period. I know MD isn't going to come out and say "the booing sparked the team into life", because it's just asking for trouble, but I fail to believe the plan was to literally do nothing for a while and then hope we get a goal to make Wimbledon nervous, which ironically came about in a way that MD said we didn't want to do.

"It's football and it's a game of opinions" Exactly. There are mine

[RegencyCheltenhamSpa]

Like it or not, the passage of play where we kept the ball but didn’t look to engage the opponents or go forward was the turning point.

Before that we had no control. That passage of play got us control. After which we scored three goals.

If one goes back and watches the match footage again there is a key moment. We go from passing across our own box with Wimbledon in our half, to passing level with the centre circle and them in their half. We started to play more forward balls and every time they cleared we squeezed a bit further forward and pinned them. Which is what you need to do against a panicky team.

We were then 2-1 up before they got close to our box again.

[longmover]

Like it or not, the passage of play where we kept the ball but didn’t look to engage the opponents or go forward was the turning point.

Before that we had no control. That passage of play got us control. After which we scored three goals.

If one goes back and watches the match footage again there is a key moment. We go from passing across our own box with Wimbledon in our half, to passing level with the centre circle and them in their half. We started to play more forward balls and every time they cleared we squeezed a bit further forward and pinned them. Which is what you need to do against a panicky team.

We were then 2-1 up before they got close to our box again.

fair enough but took 80 minutes for this to happen.

[RegencyCheltenhamSpa]

Like it or not, the passage of play where we kept the ball but didn’t look to engage the opponents or go forward was the turning point.

Before that we had no control. That passage of play got us control. After which we scored three goals.

If one goes back and watches the match footage again there is a key moment. We go from passing across our own box with Wimbledon in our half, to passing level with the centre circle and them in their half. We started to play more forward balls and every time they cleared we squeezed a bit further forward and pinned them. Which is what you need to do against a panicky team.

We were then 2-1 up before they got close to our box again.

fair enough but took 80 minutes for this to happen.

Yes it was awful and I was furious.

[plymrob]

We did whack it up a few times last night... and there were several occasions when we should have done. For me, it was an OK performance, but I felt we gave the second ball away a lot. We were OK - but always going to be beaten.

That said, in nearly every game I have seen here since 1998, last night I felt we were much more control of large passages... and even threatened. Better still, given (that from memory) we were 'dirty' Cheltenham last time around (when we won) - the foul stats (and most of rest of them) were in our favour.

I came away feeling quite positive, given the defeat. Shame a few more did not travel...