From Rooney to relegation – why Plymouth are on brink of drop

So after two seasons in the Championship, Plymouth Argyle are all but certain to be heading back to League One.

Despite a flurry of positive results in recent weeks, the Pilgrims will return to the third tier unless they can thrash title-chasing Leeds United by as many as 13 goals on the final day of the season and hope Luton Town and Hull City lose.

But while this season has not been successful, it has been full of stories.

“I actually sold it to her that this is the Monaco of England,” joked Rooney when asked how he persuaded his wife Coleen that taking the Plymouth job was the right move for his career.

It was a light-hearted moment from the most high-profile head coach the Pilgrims had ever appointed.

As a former England captain, and ex-record goalscorer for the Three Lions, Rooney had done it all as a player with Manchester United, but the jury was very much out on his coaching abilities.

A spell at Derby County had seen the club relegated to League One, although huge financial problems at the club absolved Rooney of much blame, before an uneventful spell with Major League Soccer side DC United in the United States.

Then came a torrid time at Birmingham City in 2023.

Rooney was brought in by the club’s new American owners to play attacking football, but his spell saw Blues drop from the Championship play-off places to the relegation zone after just two wins in 15 games in charge.

“I kept a pretty open mind. I raised an eyebrow and I said to myself ‘I hope it works’,” said BBC Sport journalist Drew Savage, who commentates on Argyle matches for BBC Radio Devon.

“I’d been trying to interest my colleagues at BBC Sport at a national level in Plymouth Argyle for all my career and they very rarely listened.

“In those six months when Rooney was manager, I had more conversations in the office around Argyle and my colleagues who do sport for BBC Breakfast and BBC News were far more open to mentioning Plymouth than ever before.

“So I totally get what he brought to the table in terms of exposure, of just putting us on on the map.

Rooney’s first test was a trip to Sheffield Wednesday – a club Argyle had pipped to the League One title just 15 months earlier and who had, like Plymouth, avoided relegation the previous May.

He opted for an attacking line-up, but it quickly, and spectacularly, backfired as they lost 4-0.

Plymouth had just one half-hearted attempt on target and saw Wednesday have 31 efforts at goal, 11 of which were on target, in the morale-sapping loss.

“Pre-season had been decent, it kind of came out of nowhere,” said Savage.

“We maybe hadn’t played strong enough sides but I certainly wasn’t expecting a 4-0 defeat.

“It was a problem that would become perpetual – in far too many games teams could just play through the middle of us.

“Something that did become a pattern was Rooney blamed the players. He also later admitted maybe he’d played too many of the new signings.

Things improved a bit as they won three and drew two more of their next eight league games, but then the slump kicked in.

Rooney would win just one of his next 14 games as the Pilgrims tumbled to the foot of the table.

By the time he mutually agreed to part ways with Argyle on 31 December, he had seen his side fail to score in 11 of his 23 league games in charge and concede three or more goals in eight of those matches.

Among the horror shows Argyle fans will want to forget were the 6-1 loss at Norwich, where Rooney said Plymouth’s under-18s team could have defended better, a 3-0 loss at Leeds, where his side did not have an attempt at goal, and a 5-0 drubbing at then bottom-of-the-table Cardiff City having gone down to 10 men.

“When Rooney came he tried to play a certain style,” explained former Argyle defender Brian McGlinchey, who works as a summariser for BBC Radio Devon.

“It was a lot of attacking play through the lines, and sometimes I felt that maybe some of the players didn’t have the ability to play that type of style and a lot of teams had worked Argyle out.

Having appointed a head coach everyone had heard of, Argyle went completely the other way and got someone in that nobody had a clue about.

Step forward Miron Muslic.

The Bosnia-born Austrian may not have had the profile of Rooney, but he did at least have successful managerial experience having guided Belgian side Cercle Bruges to a Europa Conference League place.

His reign began slowly with a 1-1 draw with Oxford United and a 1-0 home loss to Queens Park Rangers before his side were outclassed 5-0 at home by Burnley, the Clarets scoring four times in the final 15 minutes of a five-goal first half.

But then came the resurgence.

“Just to be there that day was an amazing thing I’ll remember for ever,” said Savage of the famous Sunday in February when Argyle knocked Liverpool out of the FA Cup.

Plymouth had already beaten Premier League side Brentford in the third round under perennial caretaker manager Kevin Nancekivell and injured captain Joe Edwards.

But under Muslic they put in arguably the most memorable performance of this season’s competition beating a Liverpool side who were clear at the top of the Premier League, in the last 16 of the Champions League and Carabao Cup finalists, 1-0 for one of Home Park’s most famous days.

“Any Liverpool team on paper should pretty much beat any Plymouth Argyle team on paper,” Savage said of the win against the Reds, who had rested several of their star players.

“But the Home Park crowd has played such a role in so many of the results we have had, and they tend to be results against teams we’re not expecting to beat.”

The crucial point of the season came in the first half of March.

It started well – having beaten Liverpool, Argyle got a third top-flight side in the FA Cup and came away from their fifth round tie against reigning Premier League champions Manchester City with a creditable 3-1 defeat.

But then it all went wrong.

They had a run of four ‘winnable’ games but lost to relegation rivals Hull City and Derby County, and were beaten 3-0 by Sheffield Wednesday – although a first away league win of the season at Portsmouth in the middle of the run salvaged some survival hopes.

But while good wins over Norwich City and Sheffield United further increased fans’ optimism, Argyle never got out of the drop zone.

“The new manager came in and realised that he had to go a lot more resilient, defensive, harder to beat,” explained McGlinchey, who saw Argyle move to three central defenders and a more compact and direct style of play

“They’ve got there to a certain degree, they’ve become a bit more dogged, nowhere near as on the front foot as much.

It is simplistic to say that Argyle were poor at both ends of the field – but the statistics do not lie.

They have conceded more goals than any other side in the Championship, while a recent flurry of eight goals in the past four games has seen them become the highest-scoring side in the bottom third of the table – but it was too little too late.

The lack of another striker was key – with Muhamed Tijani out for most of the season with hamstring issues, and Ryan Hardie’s patchy injury record over the Christmas and New Year period, goals were hard to come by.

“I still maintain that Argyle have not replaced Niall Ennis,” Savage said.

“In the League One-winning season, when the goals from Hardie dried up towards the end, Ennis was in the side and scoring goals.

“Argyle have failed to land anybody else who’s capable of consistently shouldering that burden.

“Tijani got injured and we’ve taken a while to work out exactly how to get the best out of Mustapha Bundu.

“But if we’d signed a striker, capable of scoring goals in the January window then we would probably be in a better position than we are now.”

Argyle head coach Muslic feels his side simply ran out of time to change course.

Having won four of their past six games they gave themselves a chance until Luton’s late heroics over Coventry on Saturday left them effectively down.

“We are empty. We are heartbroken, but we will get up again,” Muslic said.

“It was a massive, massive challenge and I think we took this challenge with courage, with enthusiasm, with positivity, with a completely different structure, different set up and we simply ran out of games.

Despite being back in League One, Argyle are probably in a stronger position financially then when they were promoted.

They have benefitted from two years of the Championship’s bigger television deal and have invested in infrastructure, such as a new training ground and improvements at Home Park.

Owner Simon Hallett has said he is close to selling a stake in the club to new investors, which could further bolster their coffers.

Last month, he said he was confident the budget available to Argyle if they were to go down would be “considerably in excess” of the one in their 101-point title-winning season in 2022-23.

“Our success off the pitch has enabled us to diversify and grow revenues to record levels,” he said.

“Should we be relegated, returns on our investments position us well to remain financially strong in League One with the ability to fund a highly competitive first-team squad.”

But who will play for the club is another matter.

Argyle twice broke their transfer record in January to sign Ghanaian forward Michael Baidoo and Ukraine defender Maksym Talovierov.

While Talovierov has been a hit at centre-back, Baidoo has struggled, failing to score or provide an assist and rarely featuring in the past few months.

Both have international aspirations which might be difficult playing in League One, while the likes of forward Hardie, wing-back Bali Mumba and goalkeeper Conor Hazard could all attract interest from other Championship sides over the summer.