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Kevin Nancekivell believes struggling Plymouth can stay in the Championship if they are able to replicate the performance they produced to stun Premier League Brentford 1-0 in the FA Cup third round.
Morgan Whittaker’s stunning 82nd-minute strike settled the tie at the Gtech Community Stadium, ending bottom-of-the-table Argyle’s 11-match winless run.
Nancekivell will be replaced by Austrian Miron Muslic, who was watching from the stands in west London, and the caretaker manager hailed an impressive performance from his side.
“The plan this week was to be organised, to be in our shape, to come to a Premier League team and make it as difficult as we could for them and to have a bit of quality on the ball and Morgan’s produced that quality which has won us the game,” he said.
“That’s what Plymouth Argyle’s all about, it’s built on spirit and we’ve shown that the last couple of games and the lads need to take that going forward where we have a tough challenge to stay in the Championship.
“If we continue performances like that there’s no reason why we can’t accomplish staying in the league.
“I have pride of everybody, and I’m pleased for the supporters. It’s a big day for us. The FA Cup brings that romance and we’ve put a little bit of history in it today by getting the win.”
After Whittaker received the ball on the right, he cut inside, dribbled past defenders before drilling a strike past Brentford keeper Hakon Valdimarsson into the bottom left corner.
“It was brilliant. I thought Morgan and everyone was excellent today,” Nancekivell added.
If we continue performances like that there’s no reason why we can’t accomplish staying in the league
Kevin Nancekivell
“He was dying to get a shot off, he had a couple of opportunities which were blocked but it didn’t surprise me when I saw it hit the back of the net because he’s got that quality, he deserved his goal today.”
Brentford boss Thomas Frank gave all the praise to Plymouth and admitted he was disappointed with the lack of chances his side created.
“Congratulations to Plymouth, they deserved the win,” he said.
“They defended brilliantly, they ran hard and they scored a good goal from the player we knew who could score and we prepared to take Whittaker out, he got a good goal, it was well deserved from Plymouth.
“It’s a massive missed opportunity, we are massively disappointed. We basically didn’t create anything.”
