Exeter City will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Plymouth Argyle were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
A brace, and Lorent Tolaj takes the afternoon — 8.86
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Lorent Tolaj provided it, and the 8.86 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 11 combined actions and a mark of 6.70, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Marked 8.29 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
1‑4 to Luton Town, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Marked 6.81 on 15 actions at both ends of the pitch. Midfielders like this get described as unspectacular by people who have never tried to play against one.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pedro Álvaro is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Plymouth Argyle told Lorent Tolaj something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pedro Álvaro was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Julio Pleguezuelo has his answer from Plymouth Argyle; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Herbie Kane’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Plymouth Argyle needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Nobody at Plymouth Argyle will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at Plymouth Argyle that is a harder question to answer.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Jamie Paterson has written the date down.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Plymouth Argyle can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 9 signed and 1 gone
That is the business done at Plymouth Argyle until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Farense is saying, and nobody at Plymouth Argyle is enjoying the guessing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Plymouth Argyle this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Brentford have kept their man, and Plymouth Argyle go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Murphy Cooper has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Plymouth Argyle are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Herbie Kane will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Plymouth Argyle escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Plymouth Argyle can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Up for the corner, and Herbie Kane delivers — 7.72
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Herbie Kane scored, was marked 7.72, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Devin Remie has just signed for Plymouth Argyle, and for once the answer mattered.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
The name of Ayman Benarous has come up in conversations Plymouth Argyle were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Murphy Cooper and Plymouth Argyle agree another 3 years.
Sheffield United have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Murphy Cooper trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Alex Mitchell’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Plymouth Argyle needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Plymouth Argyle, another week without a signature from Ayman Benarous.
48 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and Plymouth Argyle have no good answer.
Next up on the road: Lincoln City, position 10. The supporters who go will talk about it all week and the ones who do not will check their phones at ten to five.
Plymouth Argyle asked and Farense said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Joe Ralls and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Lausanne-Sport have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Plymouth Argyle, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Joe Edwards has his answer from Plymouth Argyle; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Murphy Cooper has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.