greenbloodedgirl as an Argyle supporter that was a devastating result.
Personally I disagree with some of the comments on here - the ref for example... He did give some odd decisions, and the linesman was a joke, how slow must his reactions be??? That flag took an age to come up!!
The ref gave you something everytime you fell or dived over.. Yet your bloke had his arms around our players neck in the box...lucky boys... Our tall forwards get penalised when they jump because your guys deliberately pull back/fall over, and even though our guy doesnt have his hands on you, gets a foul against him...
He just gave everything to you (pretty much) and jack all to us. Total homer. Can't believe a guy with three championship games experience took 'charge' of such an important match. As for your 'penalty' the guy was barely clipped, and was quite happy to take it...looked like he had been shot with a rifle.
I thought you played well first half - wondered how you were where you are, and now Long has found form you will probably be okay.
I don't think we were as poor as some people made out - not in the second half. In the first half we kept trying the long ball, but in the second half Noone and Mackie had a good go at you, and were guaranteed a goal had it not been for that annoying flag which came up..eventually. Not sure on some of the offsides, but I dont have the benefit of a replay so will live with it. Thought at times we had the beating of you, but your speed undid all our hard work. You had chances..as did we...if we had buried the Fallon header just before half time I think it would have been a different game.
Your support - shocking to be honest. start off loud, as expected, but went very quiet. Only one section near us were loud, and until your goal went in, were rather quiet. Then the usual winning singing...before we equalise and it turns into a Reading library.... Then lo and behold you get a penalty and the whole place comes alive again... I tell you what did you lot seem nervous when we equalised!! You could feel it in the air. Thought we outsang you at times, even though the occasion seemed to stifle our support. Not as loud or for as long periods as usual, which was a shame. If we had, we would have rocked the place, you were so quiet.
As for singing the song 'how sh*t must you be....', you were very lucky, we could easily have snatched it in the last few minutes, I thought if anyone would it would be us, and the penalty was pathetic.. How sh*t must you have been before when we beat you 4-1 at home then. We can't win there let alone score 4
Your pace on the counter attack and your diving are what won you that game...
The end was absolutely heartbreaking for me, and I think that is the end now.
Almost seems like revenge for our winner late on in the first game of the season of your promotion winning season..but with bigger consequences. That late goal felt amazing, this felt like someone had punched me in the gut.
Not being biased, I really did think the ref was poor and gave you far too much and not much doing for us. We only had to blow on your ear for you to get something, we would have had to be shoulder barged, knocked to the ground and whacked around the head before we could get anything! The pen was a joke and either we aren't as bad as you say, or you aren't as good as you want to think. You had plenty of possession at times but couldn't finish, or were thwarted by a battling defence, one which isn't even a settled back four. When we did have the ball we looked dangerous in the second half, but we just didn't get enough of it to capitalise.
As for Kebe, my boyfriend remarked that he made a big difference to you and played really well...so there is an unbiased viewpoint for you
As I said I think you will be okay, but you are reliant on Long. Your midfield seemed easily bypassed at times, and with a bigger attacking threat of a team against you, you will probably struggle. Your counter attack is your biggest threat.
Come on West Brom
Sorry, but we need all the help we can get now!!!
GREEN ARMY!!!
I'm sorry gbg, but I have to disagree with, and/or defend the vast majority of that post. The referee was b*llocks for both teams, he gave some quite disgraceful decisions in your favour, none more so than the two or three corners given as goal kicks and more importantly (which nobody has picked up upon) the most obvious trip on Shane Long a split second before he played the ball, while falling from said trip, through to an offside Simon Church. The foul came first, the pass second, therefore the free kick should have gone to us but instead he gave the offside to Argyle. Granted, I did think that Khizanishvili gave a number of free kick challenges by simply nudging his attacker slightly, but your assertion that the referee gave everything to us is so far wide of the mark it is laughable. That said, it was so abundantly clear that he was massively inexperienced. His positioning sometimes was poor, his decision making smacked of a referee that wasn't entirely clued up to what happens in professional football and missed most of the sly play that occurs. As for him being a homer, a quick look at the simple yellow card statistics for his previous 3 Championship games - 14 home, 0 away, tells a story in my mind.
As for the linesman, I have run the line many a time in games, albeit a lot lower level than Championship, but the principles are the same. Sometimes it is not entirely clear which direction the ball is going in, and which man the pass is intended for. A linesman has to wait for these aspects of play to be sure that the attacker in the offside position is interfering with play, which in most cases is why a linesman's flag sometimes takes an age to go up.
As for diving, I can think of no case yesterday where I considered one of our players to have dived. And I am one for noticing that kind of thing. I think your green tinted glasses may be deceiving you there. The penalty - well you need to take a look at the dynamics of a man running in full flight. Basically, it doesn't take much to send a man sprawling once his balance has been upset. I haven't seen the incident on a replay, however from my viewpoint it seemed pretty clear that his foot had been clipped by one of the chasing defenders, which in turn sent said foot into the back of his opposite ankle, which coupled with his forward momentum sent him toppling forward and to the floor. By the strictest letter of the law that is a foul, whether the clip was deliberate can only be open to debate because technically a non-deliberate foul should be penalised with an indirect free-kick. Nevertheless those decisions, when given, always result in penalty kicks. In my opinion, penalty. I don't think there can be any argument against that.
As for the game itself, I thought Plymouth were the worst side to visit us this season. Whether it was mariner's tactics, or down to simple footballing inability, Plymouth looked incapable of playing, instead looking to lump it to the new Micky Evans up front, Rory Fallon. There was prescious little to go by for Plymouth who looked a completely ineffective side when they tried to create things. The chances they had were from set pieces (to be fair two glorious opportunities), one from a defensive error from Khizanishvili early in the 2nd half, and the goal was just mishit shots, shanked clearances, general all-round panic from both defence and attack. Nothing actually created by anyone in the Argyle team in my view, and it was clear to see why you're the 2nd worst side in the division. It was clear that our players at least had the ability to play a bit (Church - who I wish wouldn't get anywhere near the first team - aside). We were better, had the vast majority of possession and territory, and should be putting teams like Argyle's to the sword. As it is, despite the obvious ball playing ability of Reading, we struggle because we have such a powderpuff attack.
Support - 7 of your 13 home league games have been sub-10k, which will be a bit of an embarrassment in a 46k stadium. You may travel decently, but Argyle fans seem to have this thing going on about how great their support is. If you had such great support, you would get more at home. It's not as though there is any competition down there in Cornwall is it? Unless I'm missing something about Truro City's attendances?
Whether or not we have enough to stay up is open to debate, but Plymouth clearly don't. Yesterday was obvious why Argyle don't score many goals. The defeat at Home Park was a massively disappointing performance from our point of view, and we caught you on a day when most things went right for you. There was never any question of that kind of thing happening last night.
In short, I thought Argyle were a poor poor side. Reading weren't much better, but we've ground out two home wins now by hook or by crook. Argyle are doomed along with Peterborough, and sticking my neck out probably won't win another game this season and are in danger of finishing bottom as well. I'm not sure whether we'll go down as well, but if we keep grinding out results the way we have been then we'll be pretty safe. It's 5 wins from 7 now for Reading.
