Argyle Internationals Special

Scroll down for our early performance report and a Bundu wondergoal

Welcome to the One Team In Devon international break special.

This week we’re easing the pain of an Argyle-feee weekend by looking at the best internationals ever to play for Argyle, while also looking back at how the current squad has gotten on over this first section of the season.

Read to the bottom for some fascinating insights on new signing Mustapha Bundu.

Argyle’s top internationals

Argyle’s most capped international player is Carl Fletcher, who played 36 games for Wales, scoring once. But none of his appearances came whilst an Argyle player – and he hung up his boots internationally in 2009, the same year he joined the club.

The honour of most-capped player while a Pilgrim goes to Tony Capaldi (pictured above), who played 22 times for Northern Ireland between 2004-07, while also making 141 appearances in green and white.

Akos Buzsaky was also a regular absentee during the international break and amassed 20 caps for Hungary between 2005-2012. They must have had some team to limit Akos to just 20 caps in seven years.

When it comes to England, Paul Mariner leads the caps – although sadly not as a Pilgrim. He made 35 appearances and scored 13 goals, but was called up the year after he left Home Park.

Of course, Argyle had the best player never to play for England – with Jack Leslie’s call up in 1925 retracted because of the colour of his skin.

And the only Argyle player to play at a World Cup was, of course, Rory Fallon. He famously scored the goal that sent New Zealand to the finals and played in all three of their group games.

First-month report card

And just like that August is done, and Argyle are firmly mid-table with seven points from our first five games.

Remember points-per-game (PPG)? Well, let’s have a look at ours for the Championship season.

So far, Argyle have a PPG of 2.0 at home and 0.5 away from home. That equates to 1.4 PPG across the first 5 games.

Should that be maintained across the 46 game season, that would leave Argyle on 64 points – and a midtable position. Something that most Argyle fans would have jumped at before the season started.

But what effect did those two last-minute losses have? A combined two minutes of football has cost us vital points, and we could be looking at 1.8 PPG, which would be enough to have secured third place in the Championship last term.

It’s crazy to extrapolate that from just five games. But it’s an early sign that Argyle can do way more than survive in this league.

Player ratings

So who has impressed the most? And what if we take the emotion out and look at some data?

We looked at the objective Who Scored player ratings, to try and get an unbiased look at player performance (data below). And there are a few interesting takes.

Morgan Whittaker is the toast of the team, with the highest Who Scored rating. He’s also topping out league-wide data for ball carrying and chances created, and there’s little debate around Morgs being the brightest spark in the team right now.

Hardie has also scored highly unsurprisingly, as has Bali Mumba.

However, Mumba does have middling numbers for both expected assists (xA) and expected goals (xG), and it’s probably fair to say that the Argyle left side hasn’t fired in the same way as the right. Digging a little deeper there’s interesting defensive statistical differences.

Mumba has made double the amount of tackles of Whittaker, and has been dribbled past far less, showing that he’s getting back and doing more dirty work on the left side.

Hazard and Edwards have come in for some criticism from some sections of Argyle Twitter, and strong ratings here offer some ammo for us defenders. Hazard ranks near the top of the league for saves – which probably says as much about Argyle’s inability to stop shots at source.

Surprisingly low is Scarr – who has put in some impressive performances by our book. And Pleguezuelo didn’t rate too highly, even after a clean sheet in his first league 90 mins.  

Callum Wright and Luke Cundle also find a lowly position on the list, perhaps because both of their best performances have been off the bench.

The Story Behind Bundu

It’s been a quiet week for Argyle, unsurprisingly given that there’s no game – and Schuey himself has flown away for a short break.

But there’s been some interesting nuggets emerging from transfer deadline day.

Pilgrim Podcast had an interesting chat with the best pal of Mustapha Bundu, the Sierra Leone international who signed on deadline day. It shone a light onto the mysterious new signing, who wound up in Cornwall, after graduating through the Craig Bellamy academy in Sierra Leone.

It was a fascinating chat (listen here) that revealed how promising his career is (Graham Potter traveled to Cornwall to try and sign him for Östersund), and how players can struggle in environments they’re not comfortable in. It seems we may have a real gem on our hands.

Neil Dewsnip also talked to Argyle TV about the recruitment process, and the role of Jimmy Dickinson, Head of Recruitment, and Ross Goodwin, Head of Football Data, in trawling worldwide football data to target players with the attributes we need.

Listen to the podcast and the Dewsnip interview. And you can check out a worldie scored by Bundu above.