Plymouth Argyle boss wary of ‘technically excellent’ Sheffield Wednesday – singles out star

The Owls play host to the Pilgrims at Hillsborough this evening in what has become a big game for both sides – Wednesday can close the gap between them to two points with a win, while defeat would open it up to eight.

Both sides came up from League One together last season after a highly-competitive campaign – though neither has the same manager that managed to achieve promotion – and will be desperate to make sure that it wasn’t done in vain.

Plymouth only have three wins in their last 13, two of which came on the road, and Foster is adamant that they won’t be looking at Wednesday’s league position and taking them lightly. He also had a word or two on Iké Ugbo.

Speaking to the club’s official website he said, “I think, if you look at the manager, since he came in the team would be 11th in the division… They have won four of the last five, so we're not going to Sheffield Wednesday thinking, ‘Oh, we can take a breather now, because we're not playing a team who are in the play-offs’. We certainly won't have that mentality. We know how difficult the game will be.

“Every game in this division is difficult. Who'd have guessed that teams in the bottom six would have gone and got some of the results they did? That's just the nature of the league. It's really, really competitive. They’ve got good players, particularly in central areas, and are a slightly different team this year from the team that won promotion through the play-offs.

“They are technically excellent. If you allow them time and space, they've got the ability to punish you - they've got a striker bang in form. It's important that we are aware of his strengths and but aware of the strengths of the players who supply him as well. Sometimes you’ve got to stop danger at its source.

“We know the challenge but, like with every game, we think that if we can perform to our highest level, we're capable of getting points. We do our due diligence, we know what we're capable of. We believe we can go up there and cause Sheffield Wednesday problems. Let's hope we can do that.

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“I trust the players. I know how hard they work. They maximize their efforts in every game that they go into. Sometimes that's enough to get points and sometimes it isn't. Hopefully we do enough to come away from Hillsborough with points on the road.”