Job done. It'll be interesting to hear more detailed accounts of how Belford, Barthram, Branco and El Gabas got on.
Belford looked OK to me. There was a cross he didn't deal with but he communicated well and looked OK. Not quite there in terms of challenging Wes, though its hard to form a judgement on him in one game.
Barthram was superb in the first half. Really got down the line well but was in acres of space and Plymouth were too dozy to work it out. Was on for my MOM before injury.
Branco didn't really bring the Brazilian flare, poor passing and looked nervous. Did get better as the game went on, looked handy in the air. But needs to improve a hell of a lot. I'm not writing him off, just calling as I saw.
El Gabas. Erm, this is a failing on my part but I can't really remember making a mental note of him doing anything, good or bad. Ajose looked the more threatening.
But what I will say is for 68 of the first 70 minutes Plymouth were gash. We looked like we could open them up whenever we attacked and should have been comfortably in the lead come half time. The woodwork denied us a more deserving cushion. Plymouth looked like they couldn't cope.
I quite enjoyed the first 70 minutes as unlike Saturday our passing looked like it had purpose.
However, maybe coincidentally, maybe not, after the substitutions we became a bit ragged. Obviously this coincided with Plymouth having a bit of a push forward. Our system of a back 3 suddenly looked like it could be stretched quite easily and Plymouth were getting a lot of joy down their left wing (our right). There were a couple of scares as they nearly but not quiet fashioned an undeserved equaliser.
The game grew quite frustrating from our point of view with missplaced passes and a frustrating lack of creativity. Thankfully their number two had a bit of a moan at the ref and so we (us in our seats) spent the rest of the match taking the piss out of him - the pinnacle was when he got 'megged'.
Anyway quite enjoyable (mostly). The two things I took from the game were
1. We need to kill teams off when they are there for the taking. We will lose points/games if we don't
2. The tossy advertising boards were turned up to 100% brightness for the first 10 minutes. The 'white' background adds were so bright the players and ball were hard to pick out when in front of them. Moaning at Jed on Twitter did the trick, they got turned down and all was well
