Plymouth Argyle: Bristol City deal was vital in keeping EFL dreams alive | OneFootball

Joe Bryan played a massive part in keeping the Greens in the Football League back in 2013

A little over a decade ago, Plymouth Argyle were a side fighting for their Football League status after a constant decline amid financial misery around Home Park.

From the highs of the Championship to the lows of a League Two relegation battle, the rug had been swiftly pulled out from below the Pilgrims’ feet, and their entire existence as a football club seemed to hang in the balance.

With barely two pennies to rub together, the Devon outfit had to piece together a team of waifs and strays for the 2012/13 season, as well as rely heavily on the loan market to get them out of trouble, with safety secured on the final day of the season.

One of the heroes of the second half of that season was Joe Bryan, with the left-sided star joining on loan from Bristol City for the final two months of the campaign and playing a huge part in getting Argyle over the line when it mattered the most.

Plymouth Argyle’s fight for Football League status

For the best part of half a decade, Plymouth Argyle were a side sliding down the football pyramid, with the Greens desperately trying to cling onto a brach or two to halt their fall, but desperately in vain.

Four consecutive finishes in the bottom four of whatever division they were playing in made any sort of optimism hard to muster during that 12/13 campaign, with another relegation battle in the fourth tier on the cards from the off, with a long, hard slog continuing throughout.

Players came and went as the prolonged turmoil showed no signs of relenting during that time, with James Brent’s ownership slowly seeing things turn around, although only survival in the EFL would help supporters see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Even as March approached, it looked as if another relegation was a distinct possibility, with just eight wins all season leaving them languishing near the bottom of the table once again, with the likes of Dagenham and Redbridge, Barnet and Aldershot Town for company.

With the writing looking to be on the wall, few would have predicted the Greens would win five of their last nine games to survive by the skin of their teeth, with John Sheridan working his magic to bring a side together to get over the line, with the likes of Reuben Reid, Jason Banton [pictured] and Lee Cox all arriving after the new boss’s appointment in the new year.

Bryan was another to join in March, with the young star joining as a boy and very much leaving as a man, as he fought tooth and nail alongside his comrades in green to earn the most unlikely of relegation reprieves.

Joe Bryan helps Plymouth Argyle avoid League Two relegation

Bryan was thrown straight into the mix after joining from City, with a 0-0 draw against Bradford City seeing him make his bow as a Pilgrim before he played his part in momentum starting to grow around Home Park.

There had been very little to cheer in the green half of Devon for so long, that the thought of piecing three wins in a row together seemed unbelievable just a matter of weeks before, but with Bryan’s energy down the left-hand side and the likes of Reid and Banton on hand to find the back of the net, things were suddenly looking up for a team that looked destined for the drop.

Fleetwood Town, Southend United, and Devon rivals Exeter City were dispatched within a two-week period, leaving the Green Army filled with a faint sense of optimism as April approached, with a squad united in the challenge against the ignominy of being the first Argyle squad to drop out of the Football League.

WIth Cheltenham Town seen off soon after, the impossible suddenly looked like a realistic prospect, although a tough-looking run-in left no one at Home Park counting their chickens anytime soon.

The Pilgrims needed a minor miracle, there was no two ways about it, and that’s what they got on a Tuesday night in Chesterfield, as they faced a play-off chasing Spireites side who had much loftier ambitions than their own at the time.

But what the Greens lacked in quality they more than made up for in endeavour, and it was Bryan who produced a moment of magic to turn the game in his side’s favour, as he cut inside from the left and unleashed a curling strike with his weaker right foot to break the deadlock and send the travelling Green Army into ecstasy in the stands.

After Curtis Nelson doubled the advantage five minutes later, the three points were in the bag, with the Bristol City loanee crediting his old man for the season-defining moment that still means so much to the Argyle fanbase.

“It’s something my Dad always tells me to do,” he told the club’s official website post-match, “Cut inside and have a go on your right foot. Just put it in that area that if the ’keeper doesn’t come and claim it, it will go in, but if a striker’s running in and gets a nick on it it’ll go in.

“I just tried to put it in that area and luckily it’s gone in. I did mean it. It wasn’t one of those shanked crosses that comes off the outside of my right foot.”

Ultimately, that proved to be the game that kept Argyle in the division, with successive defeats to end the season proving immaterial, with a 1-0 loss at Rochdale celebrated with all the gusto of a Championship-winning side, with the fans on the pitch to celebrate what felt like one of the biggest achievements in the club’s history at the time.

League titles may be great, but after staring the distinct possibility of your club’s extinction straight in the eyeballs and coming out the other side, just being able to play in the Football League the following campaign was worthy of the party that followed long into the night.

Since then, Bryan has graced the Premier League with Fulham and has established himself as a Championship regular, but to Argyle fans he will always be one of the heroes that saved their club’s skin back in the day, and for that the Green Army will forever be grateful.