Ryan Lowe delighted with Plymouth’s progress as they move to League One summit

Posted Sunday, October 10, 2021 by PA

Plymouth boss Ryan Lowe believes his side are progressing in the right direction as they hit the top of League One with a 2-1 home win over Burton.

First-half goals from Conor Grant and fellow midfielder Ryan Broom enabled Argyle to extend their unbeaten league run to 11 games despite a second-half reply from Lucas Akins.

Lowe said: “It feels good to be top of the league whether it’s for the short term or the long term, a month, a week, two weeks whatever.

“At this moment in time you can say we are up there for a reason because we deserve to be there because we are winning games of football.

“It means a lot to the club. You heard the fans singing ‘we are on our way back’ and we are on our way back to being a sustainable Championship club.

“That’s the ambition of the club and that’s why I came here to do that with the chairman, the directors and everyone associated with the football club, the players and the fans.

“But we can’t get too carried away. Yeah we are top of the league for time being. Now we have just got to keep working hard and doing the right things.

“I thought the first half was a fantastic performance. Everything we asked of the lads they have done.

“Second half was always going to be tougher because they come out, they changed shape. They put a bit of pressure on us at times, we withstood that, they scored a good goal.

“I think everyone was excited and so they should be but we will not get carried away.

“It’s where you are at the end of the season that really matters.”

Burton assistant manager Dino Maamria said: “It was a game of two halves. We are very disappointed with the first half. Obviously coming here, we knew they were in good form and we knew exactly how they were going to play.

“We knew they were going to play a 3-5-2 and the plan was to press them – our front three against their back three and allow our full-backs to get at their wing-backs.

“But we sat a little bit too deep, didn’t press them enough and they played around us too much in the first half.

“At half-time we changed shape and we matched them and got more on the front foot and totally dominated the second half.

“We probably deserved a draw, we had a great chance to score with (Daniel) Jebbison, we were unfortunate not to score. So pleased with the second half, but the first half was not good enough.

“Luke took his goal well and we did really well to work the ball from the back and it was a really good finish.

“It has been a mixed start to the season, we would have liked some more points on the board.

“We have had some very good performances, but we are not consistent enough.”