Plymouth Preview

It has been a pretty sobering week all round to be honest. Back to work after a terrific week in the French Alps, wading through all the match reports for Saturday to see what I had missed out on (or not as the case may be) and then staring at the stark reality of the table – eleventh place, four points of the play-offs, five games to go. If it hadn’t hit home before, it certainly has now – the final straw has been clutched, we are spending another season in the Championship.

It is difficult to get too excited about the remaining games of the season. Having read a lot of the blogs, most of the Addickted will be spending the next few weeks doing DIY or counting grains of sand such are the levels of apathy at this stage. The debate as to whether selling Andy Reid effectively ended our season has also been reignited. This is a topic that I sat firmly on the fence with initially. My initial reaction was that I was devastated to see him go – he was a player who always looked like he cared, put a rocket up the arse of the rest of the team and simply played very well for us. However, it was also easy to understand the argument that we could not afford to turn down £4 million (or however much it was in the end) for him, he was too injury prone and that the team played too much football through him.

Sadly my initial thoughts appear to be right, never more clear than last weekend when he smashed home a last minute winner for his new team on the back of a man of the match performance. I was always more confident of a decent performance when Reid was in the team – his passing was outstanding, he marshalled play effectively, he drove us forward and he had a positive impact on the players around him. As much as I admire and respect Matt Holland, that is not something that I see from him, not helped by a relatively poor second half of the season from Zheng Zhi. Would we be serious promotion contenders if Reidy was still around? Impossible to say, but I can’t help but feel that we would have been in a much better position. Ifs, buts and maybes …

Anyway, the post mortem can wait as there are still five games left to restore a bit of pride and perhaps a bit of confidence before next season, starting with a trip to Home Park on Saturday. If now is not the time to throw caution to the wind then I really don’t know what is but sadly I am not sure we have too many options to go crazy with. I would continue with Weaver between the posts, retain Halford, Sodje and McCarthy in the back four whilst replacing Thatcher with the more attacking minded Kelly Youga. The midfield I do not know where to start with. Is ZZ still recovering from his trip to China? Is Lloyd Sam fit? Given that I don’t know the answer to either of these questions, I would go with Thomas, Holland, Semedo and Ambrose (although surely Lee Cook deserves a decent run out). Apparently Lita and Iwelumo worked well up front together against Wolves so that front pairing is alright by me, although it would be good to see Luke Varney involved at some point.

I am trying desperately to see us getting something out of this game and many have pointed out that we play best when we have been written off. Plymouth took four points off two of their main promotion rivals before slipping to a 3-1 defeat at Coventry last week so it is difficult to know what to make of them. I think we can expect to feel the backlash of the defeat at the Ricoh Arena though, added to which Home Park seems like quite an intimate venue to go to. I have no idea how this game will go but if it ends in defeat to Charlton then it is safe to say then I will be looking forward to the end of the season as much as Paul Jewell. Let’s hope we show a bit of fight. Come on you reds.