Plymouth Argyle have retained the tiny piece of hope they have for League One survival by beating Walsall 2 – 0 at Home Park this afternoon. Despite the defeat I have to say that the visiting keeper, Jimmy Walker was immense between the sticks for Walsall making numerous fine stops to stop rampant Argyle making it a cricket score. I don’t get to write dominant and Plymouth in the same sentence very often, but it gives me hope of a few more performances like this; and Argyle could avoid the drop to the fourth tier to English football but I suspect they’ll continue their inconsistent form that has plagued the them all season. But for now I’ll bask in the glory of victory at Home Park; Yannick Bolasie putting the Pilgrims into the lead six minutes after the half time break and substitute Rory Patterson doubled the lead in the 88th minute to make sure of all three points. Moments earlier David Button made a superb save from Matt Richards to deny the visitors; if that freekick had gone in; who knows what the result would have been? Plymouth Argyle are still rock bottom of the league but now seven points from safety; it’s still going to be a big ask but there is more hope this evening than there was this morning. Six games remaining this season, three at home, three away from home, realistically, Argyle need to win three of those games; 9 points is the minimum needed for survival, but that will depend on other results as the only other relegation threatened team Argyle play is Dagenham & Redbridge.
There’s some bad news for Liverpool; midfield talisman Steven Gerrard will be out for the rest of the season after a re-occurrence of a groan injury and has undergone further surgery to correct the problem. Liverpool could really do with Gerrard being fit for the season run in especially with other key players out injured! Liverpool face Manchester City on Monday without Gerrard, Glen Johnson and Daniel Agger; Fabio Aurelio and Jonjo Shelvey are also doubtful for the tie.
Formula 1; Jenson Button has disappointed again; only managing fourth place on the starting grid while his team mate, Lewis Hamilton will start on the front row alongside Vettel; 0.3 seconds faster than Button. Sebastian Vettel pipped Hamilton to pole position by 0.1 seconds, the German’s team mate Mark Webber will start alongside Button in third place! Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso could only manage fifth place nearly a whole second behind the pole sitter, Felipe Massa qualified a further 0.4 seconds behind his Ferrari team mate; while Renault’s Nick Heidfeld split the Ferrari’s in sixth place. The second Renault of Vitaly Petrov qualified in eighth place followed by the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg, his seven time world champion team mate Michael Schumacher failed to make Q3. My favourite driver of the moment Kamui Kobayashi with start from 10th place; the Japanese looks to have solved his qualifying issues of last season; Sauber are looking like a genuine Q3 team now at the expense of Williams. Tomorrow should be an exciting race with the field seemingly much closer; Vettel doesn’t have the 0.8 second a lap advantage he had in Australia.