Lowe demands a reponse at Oxford

RYAN Lowe wants his Plymouth Argyle players to do their talking on the pitch as they bid to bounce back from the crushing 6-0 defeat by Charlton Athletic.

The Pilgrims will get the chance to do that when they play seventh-placed Oxford United at the Kassam Stadium tomorrow (3pm).

Lowe says he and his squad have ‘moved on’ from the Home Park drubbing by Charlton after addressing it together on Wednesday morning.

He now wants the players’ sole focus to be on the game against Oxford, who are in desperate need of a victory to keep alive their play-off hopes.

That led to Lowe taking the decision not to put up any player for an interview at the regular Thursday media call.

He said: “Ryan Law should be speaking to you really. He had a great game on Tuesday night (on his full Argyle league debut).

“He should be here telling you how good he was, how proud he was to wear the shirt in a league game, and all that.

“And I know you are fair with the questions, but I don’t think it’s fair on anyone to have to answer questions of what has gone on. It has gone, we have moved on from it.

“I just feel like ‘Go on lads, over to you now’. We trained on the pitch (at Home Park on Thursday), the sun was out, everything was all geared up for Saturday.

“I want them to go out and do their talking on the pitch. I don’t want them to worry about the Press, and worry about saying the wrong things.

“That’s why I didn’t want them up (for interview). I want them to be solely focused on the game on Saturday.”

While Argyle are 16th in League One with three games to go they are still not mathematically safe from relegation.

Three teams definitely cannot catch - Bristol Rovers, Swindon

Town and Northampton Town. But the likes of Rochdale, Wigan Athletic and AFC Wimbledon have gone on winning streaks to boost their chances of staying up.

Argyle require two more points to absolutely guarantee they will avoid the drop.

Lowe said: You have to give credit to the teams in and around the bottom four who are fighting for their lives, and keep climbing and keep collecting the points.

“We are on 53 points. Do you need 54, 55? Possibly, but our main objective is Saturday afternoon and let the rest of it take care of itself.

“Yeah, there are a couple of teams down there that have got a couple of games in hand.

“We wanted to achieve 52 points as quickly as we could, and we have done that because we are on 53.

“We will keep wanting to collect as many points as possibly we can from now until the end of the season.”

Oxford are managed by Karl Robinson and he and his fellow Liverpudlian Lowe are good friends - except when their teams are in opposition.

Lowe said: “He will always be my mate but I won’t speak to him now until after the game because we are battling for points with each other.

“We are good friends and I want what’s best for him and he wants best for me.”