Plymouth boss Tom Cleverley praised 20-year-old playmaker Bradley Ibrahim as new-look Argyle beat Stockport 4-2 to soar out of the League One drop zone.
Ibrahim capped a fine performance with Argyle’s third goal to put Plymouth 3-1 up in the 48th minute.
County skipper Oliver Norwood had reduced Argyle’s 2-0 lead with a first-half added-time penalty.
Plymouth led through a Kyle Wootton own goal and a thumping Caleb Watts strike. Lorent Tolaj put the hosts 4-1 up before Wootton made it 4-2 late in stoppage time.
Cleverley said: “Bradley didn’t put a foot wrong today. It was an outstanding midfield performance. He was one of the real standouts today.
“Lorent’s had a fantastic week, he’s had three goals in a week and in front of goal is where he has really impressed me.
“It was a terrific team performance. We have been doing work on performance level rather than results.
“It was all about trying to put aside league results and match our cup results, so it was all about performance today and they did fantastically well.
“We’ve played eight games in four weeks. It’s been a hectic period so I will be glad of Saturday to Saturday and weeks on the training field.
“I thought there was a real determination, grit about us and that was good to see.
County boss Dave Challinor said: “Horrific goals that we’ve conceded. When you concede one of them, it’s difficult. When you concede four of them, it’s impossible.
“So, regardless of how you play and what the game looks like, tactically, if you see the goals that we’ve conceded, we won’t win the game.
“It hurts. What I would say is some people will make mistakes, I get that. People aren’t infallible. But we can’t make the mistakes that we made.
“After you get a lifeline at the end of the first half, you then go and kick yourselves in the foot right at the start the second.
“For our second goal Plymouth had dropped off. There’ll be a positive in the fact that, yeah, it’s a good ball through a good touch and a good finish, but in the grand scheme things, that’s not a huge positive.
“I think first off, we wanted to press and wanted to be aggressive, and we were that. There wasn’t much in the game.
“Then it just came down to the fact that we made poor mistakes that give the goals away.”
