If anyone is aboard the ghost ship Argyle, it’s time to end Tom Cleverley’s reign of terror

There's a lot wrong at Argyle right now, but one thing is immediately solvable

Welcome back to One Team In Devon, as the rudderless ghostship Mayflower floats towards the haunted waters of League Two.

The fact that Tom Cleverley has remained the head coach of Plymouth Argyle for this long will confuse football historians for centuries.

The whole club feels like some kind of strange psychological experiment. What happens if you run a football club with no one in charge and everyone learning on the job? What happens if you keep a failing coach on forever in the name of stability?

Our CEO is not in post, and while that doesn’t stop him issuing statements of support, he seems ‘unconcerned’ about our frankly unacceptable league position. If we’re to be rescused by recruitment in January, then it should be remembered that we have parted ways with our head of recruitment, with the spectural Tom Randle working his notice, as we stand less than two months from the transfer window.

This is NOT normal.

As a club, we feel more dysfunctional than the likes of Sheffield Wednesday, who at least have people in post to make sound decisions.

And as I’ll explore, the need for Tom Cleverley’s dismissal has long been clear.

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Enough is enough

I’m on the record here as not being particularly plussed about the signing of Cleverley. He didn’t fit my desires for the style of football Argyle should play.

But I still believed, as everyone did, that Argyle had got a manager capable of a safe consolidation season in League One and the return of some kind of normality. How wrong we all were.

However, an analytical look at Cleverley’s short time as Watford boss should have surfaced warning signs.

Cleverley ran a decent Watford side into the ground and finished the 24/25 season bottom of the form table, with gems such as Imrân Louza at his disposal. Even in Argyle’s tepid 0-0 draw at Vicarage Road, the football on offer from Watford was sterile, boring, and ineffectual. After February, he won just two league games. His calendar-year stats for 2025 will mark him as one of the worst coaches in the EFL.

At Argyle, the football he has served up since the first game of the season has been clueless and ineffectual – bar two performances, one of which he wasn’t on the sidelines for. There’s no pattern or vision to what we’re trying to achieve – and no one can really identify any coherent plan of how we attack or defend.

While injuries at key times in key positions have hampered Argyle, especially the lack of 10s, it doesn’t explain the whole story. Argyle lost their first four games of the season playing a horribly implemented 4-2-3-1, devoid of movement, positional awareness, or attacking ideas.

The hallmarks of those performances are still evident today – and they are systemic. In other words, they are a product of Cleverley’s coaching. Argyle are deep yet played over the top at will. They have no width yet offer so much space for the opposition. They offer no movement or dynamic play, cannot overload an opposition, are too slow in attack, yet are constantly stretched, out of position, and running backward to defend goal.

As a midfielder in his prime, Cleverley’s use of Argyle’s own midfield is mystifying. The two central midfielders, whether as part of 3-4-2-1, 4-4-2, or 4-2-3-1, are always standing on top of the two centre-backs and struggle to advance the ball. This also causes confusion when defending, with players falling over each other in key moments.

Cleverley has no idea of his best team. The constant changing of the line-up shows that he is simply searching for something – but can’t see the answers. Our trio of wins came after a move to 3-4-2-1, long after it was obvious the change was needed to bring Mumba into the game. But after Caleb Watts was injured and there were no natural 10s available, he hasn’t adapted back.

Mumba and McCabe have struggled to get starts despite being two of our most talented players.

To Cleverley, everyone is a left back. Even young striker Joe Hatch, recalled from Taunton to save our League One campaign, was slotted into a left wing-back position against Huddersfield. Ayman Benerous, an attacking midfielder lauded for his gifted technical ability in pre-season, has been inexplicably deemed a left wing-back. Owen Dale, a proven attacking player with “over 200 games of experience,” has been played predominantly at – you guessed it – left wing-back. But one of the best left wing-backs in the league, Bali Mumba, has been played anywhere but.

If the on-field performances and tactical decisions weren’t enough to prove Cleverley has no idea what he’s doing, his behaviour and words should also provide enough grounds.

Failing the One Argyle test

Paul Berne’s rationale for keeping Cleverley is stability, and the mythical One Argyle ethos was also cited. But Cleverley fails every test of the One Argyle ethos.

Since the first game of the season, Cleverley has waged a war of empty word soup against David Fox and the recruitment team. The idea of everyone pulling in the same direction was undermined from the start.

Cleverley has constantly moaned and griped that the squad that has been assembled is not good enough. He’s bemoaned the quality of players and their mentality in public. He called out Bradley Ibrahim in the press early in the season. At every juncture, he has taken aim at the squad, the recruitment team, and the board. It’s little wonder the players have no confidence or fight.

This squad is certainly not the finished article. Some mistakes have been made in signing projects and players with questionable injury records. But to be bottom of League One after 15 games is a frankly negligent performance as a head coach. To serve up the football seen so far, and to deflect the blame for that onto everyone but yourself, is shameful.

It’s time to end this insanity and get a grip of this football club. It might already be too late.