Another award for Argyle’s Cooper

PLYMOUTH Argyle’s 22-year-old rising star Mike Cooper has received another goalkeeping accolade after his superb performances this season.

Cooper has won the Sky Bet League One Golden Glove award for the most clean sheets in the third tier of English football this term.

He finished joint top with David Stockdale, the 36-year-old Wycombe Wanderers shot-stopper, with both keeping 18 clean sheets in 46 starts for their respective clubs.

Stockdale’s season will now continue into the two-legged play-off semi-finals with Wycombe taking on MK Dons for a place in the final at Wembley on May 21. However, the campaign is over for Cooper after Argyle lost 5-0 to a rampant MK Dons at Home Park on Saturday and dropped out of the top six, to be replaced by Wycombe, who were 2-1 winners at Burton Albion.

Cooper had been on a run of seven consecutive clean sheets at the Theatre of Greens prior to the drubbing by MK Dons, who led 3-0 before the Pilgrims had Jordan Houghton sent-off in first half stoppage time.

Cooper also won the Emirates FA Cup Save of the Fourth Round award for a magnificent stop from England star Mason Mount in the Pilgrims’ 2-1 defeat after extratime away to Chelsea. He went on to be named in the official League One Team of the Season at the 2022 EFL Awards in London last Sunday.

That was followed by Cooper picking up the players’ and supporters’ player-of-the-year trophies at Argyle’s presentation night.

Cooper has now made 92 successive starts for the Pilgrims in League One since the start of the 2020/21 campaign, and has made 111 appearances for the club overall.

Argyle’s on-loan West Bromwich Albion goalkeeper Alex Palmer won the League Two Golden Glove award in the pandemic-shortened 2019/20 season with 14 clean sheets in 37 games.