27 January 2052 – Plymouth Argyle’s unlikely crusade
Plymouth fucking Argyle. A name you never thought you’d see hovering around the top half of the Premier League table, yet here they are, holding their own with the bastards from Manchester and London. Ten years ago they were scrapping around the Championship like rats in a skip, now they’ve punched their way to tenth in the big league. Not bad for a club that used to measure glory by whether they got a pasty van outside Home Park.
The climb wasn’t pretty. Championship campaigns stacked one on top of another, false dawns, and sackings galore. Lambert, the poor sod in charge now, has somehow steadied the ship after a decade of managers being tossed overboard faster than a dodgy pint of Carling in a Birkenhead boozer. Plymouth nicked the Championship crown in 2049, bounced up, and even finished fourth in 2050/51 – Champions League nights nearly coming to Devon, imagine that.
Honours board? Sparse. Sky Bet League One medals, a Championship pot or two, and not much else. But who gives a toss? The real prize is survival and the chance to bloody the noses of the so-called elites. They’re not here to look pretty, they’re here to fight, and to spend too – record transfers now pushing north of sixteen million quid. Small beer for Chelsea, massive gamble for a club like Argyle. They’ve got Nigel Powell banging them in, and that lad’s as close to a hero as the Green Army have had in years.
Let’s not forget the scran down there either – proper pasties, not the plastic shite you get served at Spurs. No cheese bollocks either, thank Christ. Just pastry, meat, and fire in the belly. Salad cream at the ready, job’s a good’un. If you’re trekking to Plymouth for an away day, you’ll eat well, even if your team gets turned over by these stubborn sods.
Right now Plymouth sit 10th in the league, safe, stable, and more ambitious than ever. They’re not just making up the numbers. They’ve survived the lower-league graveyard, risen from years in the muck, and now stare down billion-pound giants without blinking. Don’t be shocked if one day soon, Home Park is hosting European football. And wouldn’t that be the biggest piss-take of all?
— Digby, Red Corner