Wayne Rooney has explained why he thought it was the right time to bring back Conor Hazard as Plymouth Argyle’s goalkeeper for the Championship match away to Oxford United.
Hazard made his first start since suffering an ankle ligament injury at the end of August as Dan Grimshaw was named among the substitutes after conceding 21 goals in the previous six games. While that was far from being just the fault of Grimshaw, Rooney felt it was making it difficult for the August signing from Blackpool to perform at his highest level.
So the Pilgrims’ boss brought back Hazard against Oxford and while he did make a couple of good saves in the first half in particular it was not enough to prevent bottom-of-the-table Argyle from slipping to a 2-0 defeat. That came after they lost 4-0 away to Coventry City on Boxing Day.
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Rooney said: “I think Grimmy has been really unlucky since he has come in. He does know in the previous game, certainly two of them goals he could have done better, but before that the goals he was conceding he wasn’t really at fault for.
“When you are conceding the amount of goals he was conceding I think it can be difficult for you to perform how you want to perform so I thought it was the right time to make the change.”
Argyle are now on a run of only one win in 14 Championship matches since early October and the defeat by Oxford offered little hope of any immediate upturn in their fortunes.
The U’s went ahead in the 14th minute when Ciaron Brown headed home a cross from the right and Przemyslaw Placheta extended their lead just after the hour mark. The Pilgrims did not ever look like coming back from that.
Rooney said: “It wasn’t good enough. We didn’t create enough chances, the goals we conceded we didn’t do enough to try to stop them scoring. I didn’t think we deserved anything out of the game.
“It has been an issue for us for a few weeks now. From our point of view, we are trying to create chances and score goals but we didn’t hurt them enough today.
“We have done a lot of work on stopping crosses. We didn’t get tight enough to stop the cross second phase from a corner for the first goal, and the second goal they break out, we don’t do well enough defensively in a one-on-one situation and it has cost us.”
He added: “From everything we have done in preparation for this game I expected a bit more today, we didn’t get it, and that’s football. Unfortunately, we have come away again with a defeat.”
Argyle will play their fourth of five games in 15 days when they take on Bristol City at Home Park on New Year’s Day. The Robins are 10th in the Championship after back-to-back home wins against Luton Town (1-0) and Portsmouth (3-0) and beat the Pilgrims 4-0 at Ashton Gate at the end of November.
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