Plymouth Argyle are fighting for their lives. Last week in the high court they survived a winding-up order over £700,000 of unpaid tax. This was the first of 13 games before they return there on 9 February. They needed no winding up for a Devon derby. Their 2-0 win extended an unbeaten league run against Exeter City to 13 games. "There's only one team in Devon," sang their fans, which was a bit rich considering Exeter are still a point and two places above them, but there is not much else rich about the club. The fans may prove their greatest asset.
The supporters' trust met on Saturday to discuss a move for representation on the board. Exeter's have gone further. After they dropped into the Conference in 2003 they bought their club. Successive promotions from 2008 took them to League One, where Plymouth joined them in May after losing their last five games in the Championship, scoring one goal.
Argyle, hard by the Channel, are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Peter Ridsdale, late of Leeds, Barnsley and Cardiff, is breathing down their neck, giving freely of his time with advice on a business plan. As history shows, it is possible to take a club to the wall but you cannot make it sink. Plymouth, after seven seasons of successive improvement as they went from 12th in the fourth tier to 10th in the second, have fallen into a mess under the chairmanship of Sir Roy Gardner, who took over in July 2009 with a five‑year plan to reach the Premier League. The 63-day reprieve inevitably lifted a cloud and Peter Reid, the manager since June, said that, with the derby too, the team would need no motivation. "We're professionals, albeit not getting paid [November's wages remain in a frozen bank account]," he said. "There are people losing their jobs all over the country. It's tight out there."
It certainly was in his defence. Exeter hardly had a sight of goal, though the game might have turned out differently if Jamie Cureton, an itinerant poacher, had equalised just before half-time instead of bending his shot wide. Before the hour Bradley Wright-Phillips had scored his and Plymouth's second, rising to head in a pinpoint cross from the sweet left foot of Craig Noone. He hooked in the first when Artur Krysiak spilled Noone's free-kick.
Reid had said beforehand, when hoping for a trouble-free derby: "May the best team win." The better one did. It was the first time since last December that they had achieved two wins running. "We ain't done nothing yet," he said later.
Crowd concerns arose from the cup match a month before at Home Park, where Exeter won 2-1. Surely the police did not underestimate the Johnstone's Paint Trophy? This time there were 220 officers on duty and Superintendent John Green commended fans. "Our objective was to make sure everybody was able to enjoy their day in the city, enjoy a cracking game of football and go home safely." The crowd of 14,347 was double the average. Only 12 were arrested – mission accomplished, nothing feral. The referee, Grant Hegley, did his bit on the field.
Plymouth's concern now is that only four of the next 12 games are at home and they may be forced by financial circumstance to sell their best players in January's transfer window. Brighton have their eyes on Noone. Others may see cherries to pick at prices made bargain by need. Plymouth's counsel at court said the club was undergoing refinancing and that negotiations with investors, if agreed, would bring in "sums substantially in excess of the petition debt and other liabilities". The debt is understood to be between £7m and £9m.
The deputy chairman, Paul Stapleton, is looking well beyond 9 February, despite what he called "a great underwhelming moment" when England failed to land the 2018 World Cup. Home Park, not in its current form, was to be one of the stadiums. "We need to progress our plans," he said, but now "we will be concentrating on a 25,000-seater with infrastructure" instead of a 43,000-seater. It is talked of as the Theatre of Greens, which sounds like Covent Garden's broccoli department.
Plymouth is famous for being the largest city never to have had a team in the top flight, a label it looks most likely to lose by another city getting bigger. "We have planted our flag on the world map once again," Stapleton said. Fans will be happy if it is flying in Exeter on 30 April.
