I could see this one coming as I watched the game on ifollow. I said t0 my wife as the interval approached that what Town must not do is to concede a goal before the break. We were looking comfortable, and Plymouth were starting to run out of ideas, and the crowd were very quiet. ” I explained, “If we get to the break without giving a silly goal away, we should go on to win this.”
No sooner had I uttered those words and it was 1-1, and what a very silly goal it was to give away! The goal itself was unremarkable but our defending was very poor. After a free-kick out on the left Randell crossed the ball and Edwards was far more alert than Matt Penney who was caught ball watching. Keeper Walton tried to save the wing-back’s blushes by tipping the ball onto the crossbar, but Jephcott was able to tap home from close range. It was a terrible goal to concede at any time the match, but with just one minute to go before the break, it was unforgivable.
You could read the script before it played out before us. The Pilgrims would go in at half-time believing they could win it and now they had the crowd on their side as well. I turned around again to my lady who was watching with me intently and said, “That is what I feared the most. A goal just before the interval to the home side. Now we’ll have our work cut out to get anything from this one.” And so it was to prove. Plymouth scored again early in the second half, and it was ex-Town loanee Conor Grant who got the goal. Murphy’s Law but so very avoidable.
In fairness to Town, Manager Paul Cook had to reshuffle his pack, with Luke Woolfenden and Hayden Coulson coming into the side for Janoi Donacien and Wes Burns, who reported ill only this morning. Sone Aluko was also absent after he was taken off in last Saturday’s 2-1 win against Fleetwood.
The most annoying aspect of this away loss is that we missed a bagful of chances. Macauley Bonne missed a sitter early on when Coulson broke and found the forward in oceans of space, only for Bone to see his shot cleared by home captain Joe Edwards with the net at his mercy.
He missed another good chance in the second half too when he found himself unmarked but shot straight into the arms of the Plymouth keeper. He was not the only Town culprit though. Kyle Edwards was fed intelligently by Conor Chaplin but then sliced his shot wide of the mark when it seemed easier to score, and then Harper missed another when he seemed set to find the net.
We keep dropping points when we are in winning positions. This is a re-occurring theme. We get an early goal, then take our foot off the gas, and seem to wait for the opposition to score. The manager has to sort our mental frailties because it keeps costing us points.
It was a well-taken goal from George Edmundson to put us in front, but we cannot keep inviting teams back into the match. All habits are easy to make but not so easy to break. Let’s get into the good habits and not the bad ones because we won’t be going anywhere if this continues.
Plymouth Argyle: Cooper, Wilson, Scarr, Broom (Mayor 83), Edwards (captain), Hardie (Garrick 74), Grant, Randell, Galloway (Gillesphey 90), Camara, Jephcott. Unused substitutes: Burton, Agard, Law, Jenkins-Davies.
Ipswich Town: Walton, Woolfenden, Edmundson, Nsiala, Penney, Coulson (Celina 61), Morsy (captain), Evans (Harper 81), Chaplin (Pigott 81), Edwards, Bonne. Unused substitutes: Hladky, Burgess, El Mizouni, Jackson.
The referee was Robert Lewis from Shrewsbury.
Attendance: 16,087
The travelling blue and white army amounted to a fantastic 1,513! ( Great support but it is a pity the performance could not have matched it.)
