Opinion: Plymouth Argyle should be eyeing up summer homecoming for experienced Championship midfielder | OneFootball

The 2022-23 League One season may not be over just yet, but whatever happens from now Plymouth Argyle would be deserving participants in next year's Championship.

The rise of the Pilgrims from their promotion under Ryan Lowe in 2020 to the third tier to where they sit now - the summit of the League One table - hasn't been a fluke at all and it has been thanks to good planning and building from the hierarchy at Home Park.

They may now be just eight matches from their return to the second tier of English football after 13 years away, but whatever division they end up plying their trade in in 2023-24, there could be fresh faces arriving at the Devon outfit.

A number of first-team players are out of contract come the end of the current campaign and some loanees such as Bali Mumba will surely head back to their parent clubs with aspirations of making it in the first-team, which will leave Steven Schumacher with some thinking to do.

Perhaps one area of the pitch that Schumacher may look at with a need to add some more experience if they are promoted to the Championship is in midfield.

The likes of Matt Butcher, Jordan Houghton and Adam Randell don't have any games under their belt at that level whatsoever, but there may be a perfect player to come in and add another option in the form of ex-Argyle man Dan Gosling.

It has been over 15 years since Gosling departed the club whose academy he came through - time really does fly - and made 24 appearances for their senior side as a teenager before the Premier League and Everton came calling in January 2008.

His career hasn't been perhaps what it should have been though - a serious knee injury in 2010 when he was just 20 years of age stunted his development and his move to Newcastle later that year saw him play just 36 times for the Magpies in four years.

Finally finding his feet with Bournemouth in 2014, Gosling played pretty frequently in the Premier League for the Cherries, and since January 2021 he has been a Watford player, with that stint set to come to an end pretty soon.

Gosling was a bit-part player for the Hornets in the Premier League last season but under Slaven Bilic he had found a new home at right-back earlier in the campaign - only for an achilles injury to end his season back in November.

Whilst not official yet, Watford are set to pay up the rest of his contract as he will not be fit until the summer, meaning he will be a free agent when the summer transfer window opens.

And what better club to go back to than Plymouth?

They will need all the Championship experience they can get if they manage to hang on to their automatic promotion spot - or at worst come through the play-offs - and Gosling would fit right into that, plus it would bring him back home to where it all started.

Yes, the injuries would have to be a concern and a ruptured achilles can be tough to get back to your best from - especially at the age of 33 - but it would be very heartwarming regardless of the division they are in next season if Gosling were to return to Home Park for one final season, or maybe more depending on how things go.