Plymouth Argyle suffered a humiliating 5 – 1 defeat to Oxford United away at the Kassam Stadium on Tuesday evening. The inexperience of the Argyle squad being the downfall of the Pilgrims in this match, the starting XI have an average age of just 21, seven of those players are teenagers. I did think there might be some hope of salvaging a point from the Kassam Stadium when Walton equalised from the penalty spot in the 55th minute but sadly it wasn’t to be; Oxford ran riot over Argyle in the final 35 minutes, scoring four and narrowly missing out on at least one other goal.
The big talking point right now is caretaker manager Carl Fletcher and first team coach, Romain Larrieu sitting on the bench when experienced players are at a premium. I’m not criticising the young players in any way, they have been thrown into the deep end in a crisis situation and have done the best they can, but it really is boys Vs men. A team with an average age of 21 can not compete with the bigger, stronger and more experienced players in League Two! Fletcher has defended not playing himself, saying that he wouldn’t have been able to make a difference, but I disagree, having some additional experienced players on the field would have helped to stabilise the team and take some pressure off the youngsters. I also believe that Onismor Bhasera should have started the game which would have helped strengthen the defence with his experience. Argyle need all the experienced fit players they have on the field right now; as things stand I really can’t see the Pilgrims being a football league team next season, much to my dismay!
Given that it is now past 6pm UK time; I can only assume that the players and staff have been asked to defer wages for another month, there has been no report to the contrary so I think it’s a safe assumption. We are still facing the same stumbling block, the gulf between what P&A Partnership want and what James Brent is willing to pay is still as large as ever! And now it is revealed that five former players have still not signed the agreement to repay them over a five year period. There is still too few truths coming from the administrators, Akkeron Group and Peter Ridsdale, they’re not even singing from the same song sheet! C’mon Brent, put your money where your mouth is! Pay P&A their 50%, pay the long suffering staff this months wages!