Really has been pretty uneventful to be honest. I bought myself a new laptop to use for my DJ’ing activities. It’s a 2.8Ghz Intel dual core, 2GB RAM and 120GB hard disk; all for £270, but sadly it’s running Vista so I will need to install XP on it to be able to use it with my Sound Blaster Extigy as there aren’t any Vista drivers for the card, and never will be as Creative has discontinued support for the product. Erin also bought herself a new laptop so she is no longer being screwed over by Rent-A-Center for a laptop that is barely capable of running the operating system. She had already paid in $1700 into a laptop that is only worth $600. Now she has her own laptop that she paid just over $500 for, and has much better specs than the one she was effectively buying at an extortionate rate, $43 per week for a Celeron based laptop with 512MB running Windows Vista, which barely runs the OS!
Yesterday I went out to the pub to watch Plymouth Argyle play Sheffield Wednesday on Sky Sports. And frankly I was rather disappointed in what I saw. Things started well with Peter Halmosi’s freekick from just outside the penalty area getting a wicked deflection off Deon Burton wrong-footing Lee Grant to give the Pilgrims the lead after just two minutes. Then it all went pear-shaped as Plymouth seemed to sit back on their lead and allowed Sheffield to have the lions share of possession. It just seems like the whole team were playing with a major negativity complex, not closing down the Wednesday players, only making the tackle in the final third of the field. Frankly I thought that The Owls were the better team, having much more urgency and passion than Argyle ever looked like having during the match. Peter Halmosi who has just come back from injury was substituted in the 60th minute and The Pilgrims were sitting back even further allowing the home team to push forward even more. And eventually that pressure turned into a goal for Sheffield, the Argyle defence failed to close down Tommy Spurr allowing him to find space to launch a rocket from 25 yards out. Then a few minutes later Plymouth had a massive let off only being saved by the woodwork, and ‘Super’ Luke McCormick had to work overtime to deny the home team all three points. Now what baffled me is why the hell did Argyle manager Paul Sturrock wait until the 86th minute to bring Jamie Mackie on to replace Steve MacLean who had done bugger all during the game and even more bizarre bringing on Rory Fallon in the 90th minute. It seems that Sturrock can only think retrospectively instead of being proactive bringing on Mackie after 60 minutes and not let the game plan stagnate, a second goal would have all but finished off The Owls, but that didn’t happen, Plymouth never looked like they were chasing the second goal. I find the type of football that Sturrock likes to play to be negative, instead of positive play, pass and move play, it’s more of a ‘hoof’ ball game right now. Many have been criticising Sturrock and I have resolutely been defending him, but based on this performance I have doubts creeping in about Sturrock’s credentials within this league. So the end result; a 1 – 1 draw which has all but killed off any remaining hopes of a play-off place, but every cloud has a silver lining; Ex Argyle manager Ian Holloway’s Leicester City dropped into the bottom three because of Argyle’s failure to get the job done. Plymouth are currently in 10th five points adrift of 6th spot and Wolves (currently in 8th spot) who we meet in the final game of the season have two games in hand over Plymouth!
