Home Park Battle

In the end we could have won it with a couple of late chances, Andy Gray first turned a Steve Jones cross no more than a few inches wide of the post and then saw the home goalkeeper Luke McCormick make an excellent save to keep him out.

Maybe that would have been more than we had deserved, but I'm convinced that had we come up against this sort of team, in this sort of game during last season we would have come home with a battering.

That's what Plymouth do, they try to batter you, and they'll try any means possible. Four times their players (Ebanks-Blake twice and David Norris twice) were pulled up for diving by disappointing referee Pat Miller, incredibly on all four occasions he took no further action other than to award us a free kick as they went down. I don't like it, it's cheating, but that's how they play, no wonder they get so many penalties.

Steve Cotterill was forced into changing his team with John McGreal ruled out, and as expected it was the only change with Stephen Foster coming in for his first league start for the Clarets since signing from Crewe in the summer.

He had something of a dramatic start on his full debut, almost giving the Clarets an early lead before more than once causing problems at the back. We started brightly enough and with just a few minutes gone the Burnley fans at the far end to the action thought we'd gone in front. It followed a corner and Foster, who headed against the woodwork at Palace earlier in the season, saw his effort this time cleared off the line.

One thing you get from Argyle is a team prepared to shoot, and from any distance and that's what they were doing in those early stages of the game. Poor Foster was struggling during that period and more than once made mistakes that could so easily have led to us falling behind. Whether it was nerves, whether it was struggling with the pace of the game, but whichever it was he was struggling. To his credit he played through it and went on to have a good game at the back.

I thought we had the edge, but a forced substitution just before the half hour signalled a change in the game. Gifton Noel-Williams, so good in recent weeks, was forced off with an injury and replaced by Kyle Lafferty. From then until half time we faced what at times looked to be an onslaught from Plymouth.

Brian Jensen made a couple of good saves, the second of them a good save as he reacted quickly to tip an effort over the bar. Hayles, who had such a good game for the home side, had the best of their chances but fortunately he was pushed wide and his chance was gone.

There was frantic looking at watches from the Burnley fans who were desperate for us to get to half time with the score still level, and we did that. Those last few minutes had been similar to, maybe even tougher than, the end of the game at Palace. But we'd stood firm, had a little bit of luck, and got in at half time level.

In truth Plymouth had just had their best spell of the match, they were never to put us under that sort of pressure again during a second half that wasn't the greatest in entertainment as we struggled going forward whilst dealing with anything they had to offer.

Our biggest problem seemed to be free kicks, but as was said, with a penalty taker like Wotton no wonder they seem to spend their time looking for spot kicks. I was far from happy with referee Miller but at least he spotted all the diving that was going on.

One of his most bizarre of decisions was to award Plymouth a free kick for a foul on the goalkeeper, and to be fair he did require some treatment. What Miller had failed to notice was that the goalkeeper had been in collision with one of his own players.

It was inevitable that if Plymouth were to score it would come from a free kick and our narrowest escape came just that way. From the kick they hit a long range effort against the bar and from the other end of the ground it looked as though they might turn in the rebound, but it hit Jensen on the back and bounced clear.

They continued to try and push forward, but hardly troubled the Beast again who had a relatively quite second half although he did almost gift them a goal when he dropped the ball, although he recovered quickly to claim it.

Plymouth were running out of ideas now and I remember looking at my watch with about fifteen minutes to go and thought to myself that we'd won ourselves a point, that we'd seen them off.

We had, and as we reached those last few minutes it was the Clarets who suddenly started to look the more likely, and how close we came to getting that winner. It might have been considered robbery by some but I would have taken it. The more points you get then the shorter the long journey home appears to be. It was a good result though, it still leaves us unbeaten away from home with just three points less now than in the whole of last season.

There were some good individual performances and you have to give some real credit to the two central defenders. Foster shook off that poor start, Duff was again in very good form, and we reduced Plymouth to very few opportunities in that second half.

But for me, I'm looking in central midfield and it is once again James O'Connor whose recent form is as good as anything we've seen from him since he signed for us. It was another good performance from him.

I suspect the next away match at Luton will be somewhat different to this – Luton, now what happened their last season?

The teams were;

Plymouth: Luke McCormick, Paul Connolly, Marcel Seip, Hasney Aljofree, Tony Capaldi, David Norris, Paul Wotton, Lilian Nalis, Akos Buzsaky, Barry Hayles, Sylvan Ebanks-Blake (Cherno Samba 86). Subs not used: Romain Larrieu, Mathias Doumbe, Luke Summerfield, Bojan Djordjic.

Burnley: Brian Jensen, Frank Sinclair, Michael Duff, Stephen Foster, Jon Harley, Wade Elliott (Alan Mahon 81), James O'Connor, Micah Hyde, Steve Jones, Andy Gray, Gifton Noel-Williams (Kyle Lafferty 27). Subs not used: Graham Branch, Chris McCann, John Spicer.

Referee: Pat Miller (Beds).

Attendance: 12,817.