It’s never a particularly handsome reflection of how your season has gone if you find yourself staring down the barrel of relegation heading into the final day, with your director of football acting as caretaker manager.
Following a three-game undefeated run – picking up seven points from a possible nine – a former Rangers starlet appeared to be playing a starring role in a Great Escape script. But following a 3-0 defeat away at Stoke City which sent Ryan Hardie‘s Plymouth plummeting back into the mire, Neil Dewsnip’s team selection ahead of Saturday’s trip to Millwall didn’t exactly raise the hopes of a return to form.
Morgan Whittaker, the winger Rangers spent much of early 2023 courting, was shoved out to the left, a man with 20 goals this season removed from his favoured position. The experienced, long-serving Hardie, meanwhile, was left on the bench for Plymouth’s most important game of the entire season.
While Hardie has hardly been in prolific form of late – his Golden Boot-chasing start little more than a fleeting purple patch – the former Scotland Under 21 ace still has a respectable 12 Championship goals in 2023/24.
That is ten more than the man who took his place at The Den, Ben Waine drawing another blank as Dewsnip’s experimental XI blew up in Plymouth’s face.
Former Rangers starlet facing final day disaster
“Ryan Hardie’s form has not been great but I still feel, at this stage, he is still a better player than Waine,” said a baffled Ali Maxwell, co-host of the excellent Not The Top 20 podcast.
“I am surprised he didn’t start.”
“Also, just experienced heads. You’ve got Ben Waine who has come in for his first season in English football, struggled the whole season, against Ryan Hardie who has played a lot for Plymouth Argyle,” adds EFL oracle George Elik.
“(Hardie) was part of a promotion-winning team last season, is very savvy…
“So many bizarre decisions in that team selection.”
Ryan Hardie deserves better
With only one Championship matchday remaining, Plymouth are still outside of the relegation zone but only by one place and one point. A win at Millwall would have secured their survival, and Dewsnip will have a lot to answer for in the minds of an irate Argyle fanbase if they are leapfrogged by Birmingham City on Saturday.
Both Plymouth and Birmingham are facing promotion-chasing sides, the former hosting Hull and the latter taking on Norwich.
At least, if Plymouth do end up slipping down the plughole, they will have a striker with a superb record in England’s third tier to fall back on. It was Hardie’s 17 goals which helped Argyle out of League One last term. And, provided the Rangers academy graduate sticks around unlike the definitely-departing Whittaker, it will be he who finds himself shouldering the burden again in another promotion-chasing campaign.
