Mindset
GOALSCORER Antoni Sarcevic was chief among Pilgrims in celebrating the mindset that allowed Argyle to secure a 1-0 victory at league leaders Forest Green Rovers.
After deservedly edging in front through Sarce’s deflected strike in the first period, Argyle had to defend doggedly in the closing stages to secure three valuable points.
“We knew coming here would be tough,” said Sarce. “Obviously, they’re top of the league but our mindset on games is about us.
“We know how good we are and we know what we need to do to win and it’s a big win for us, we need to seriously start pushing on now and creating good form.
“The first half was a good game of football with two teams who want to play and then in the second half we are in a different mindset, we’re 1-0 up, they’re going to have moments in the game, bringing their centre half upfront and they’re pumping balls, so we’ve just got to make sure we’ve got that other side to us and that’s what we are showing at the minute.
“You’ve seen on the pitch now that we are hard to beat.”
The winning goal on 24 minutes involved a clever short-corner routine between Sarce and Danny Mayor, with that dream scenario for a coach, seeing work on the training ground successfully transferred to a match-day.
“The gaffer is massive on short corners,” Sarce said. “We’re not a huge team but we’ve got good players that can get on the ball. We work on me and Danny going short [in training].
“I’ve just seen him on his own with only one man and I’ve come inside, as soon as it opened up, I knew I’d connected with it well and it was nice to see it hit the back of the net.
“You know when you’ve hit it sweet, and I got to celebrate with the fans who were unbelievable.
“When you get a second [goal], the game is seen out, but we didn’t get it and they were pumping the ball forward and it just shows that other side to us now, we’re resilient and that’s what we need going forward.
“The game’s going to have its moments and in the last fifteen minutes when they’re pushing for a goal, that’s just how it goes, so we’ve got to make sure we stop that and make sure we can see the game out like we have done."
This match saw Argyle’s first away league game win since Mansfield back in late September, which has now placed us in 11th position in the league, just two points outside the play-offs and four points off the automatic promotion positions.
“You can’t read too much into the position, we’re not even past December,” said Sarce. “Putting a marker down by coming to the top of league at this time and winning in front of 1,200 of the best fans in the league by a mile is nice.
“It’s always nice to make sure they go home happy.”