Tom Cleverley says Plymouth have been building towards Doncaster demolition

Dec 20, 2025 2 min read
Tom Cleverley’s Plymouth were comprehensive winners (Barrington Coombs/PA)
Tom Cleverley’s Plymouth were comprehensive winners (Barrington Coombs/PA)

Tom Cleverley says the 5-1 demolition of Doncaster was the level of performance his Plymouth side have been building towards.

A Lorent Tolaj hat-trick plus strikes from Owen Oseni and Xavier Amaechi saw Argyle come from behind for a victory which powered them out of the relegation zone.

And Cleverley has called upon his players to deliver such a showing on a more consistent basis and ensure their time out of the bottom four is not temporary.

“It’s a really pleasing performance and we’ve been building up to this,” he said. “We won’t be resting after this. We have to show this more consistently.

“Six or eight weeks ago we took the stance that we have to make the team more solid. We went to two banks of four and we knew that we needed the solidity and maybe with some dogged results would bring us some confidence and more complete performances would grow from there.

“I thought we saw the first of those today and now it’s about working hard to give us more performances like that in the future.

“We knew Doncaster are a good football team and we knew we had to take chances in the build-up. That’s where our first goal came from with good aggressive pressure and then I thought we were really good in transitions today.”

Grant McCann says there is plenty of soul searching to be done by him and his players as he seeks to reignite Doncaster’s season.

Rovers have now won just one of their last 14 matches in League One and have dropped into the relegation zone with McCann pledging to leave no stone unturned in order to spark a change of fortunes.

“We need to get to the bottom of it all really and that’s my job that I get paid to do,” he said. “At this moment in time I’m not delivering it. It’s as simple as that. I always hold my hand up and take responsibility.

“I put the team on the pitch. I pick the players, the subs, the formations – everything. So I need to look at myself and see what I’m doing wrong.

“Am I having too much belief in certain players, shapes, systems or whatever it may be? I need to look at it because at this moment in time it’s not good enough.

“It’s not good enough to concede 11 goals in three games. It’s simply not.

“I need to get back to the drawing board at the training ground and first of all trying to make us hard to beat.

“As much as we want to be good on the ball going forward and attacking, we have to be good at the other end.”

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