Plymouth’s daunting task and men who think they could conquer a bear | Soccer

IN THE GREEN CORNER …

In a 2021 study, 1,700 people were asked which animal they could beat in an unarmed fight. The results were alarming, with 9% of men believing they could conquer both an elephant (who regularly uproot trees to eat their leaves) and a gorilla (who have, on average, about six times more upper-body strength than the average human). Football Daily is not in the business (or any business, come to think of it) on how many men out of 100 would actually survive an unarmed scrap against an elephant or a gorilla, but this tea-timely email has been pondering if it really would be nine. But whether you’re signing up for a fight-to-the-death tussle against a wild animal or casually attempting to boot a stray football (first time) back over the playground wall in front of your partner, their parents and a small crowd of expectant teenagers, what people think they can do versus what they can actually do doesn’t always match up. Confidence is essential in elite sport, we’re told, but – just like those four pint glasses Football Daily dropped on the pub floor after refusing the offer of a tray – it also remains an incredibly fragile and dangerous commodity.

All of which is, of course, an incredibly laborious way of setting up Plymouth Argyle’s FA Cup trip to Manchester City on Saturday. How must those plucky Pilgrims be feeling, given their recent history of knocking out Premier League Brentford in the third round and their giant-killing of champions-elect Liverpool in the fourth round? Perhaps very confident of repeating the trick! Hurray for the Magic of the Cup! Hurray for Plymouth! Or, given that City seem to have finally got their act together, are playing Argyle in the final competition in which they can actually win any silverware this season, still have around a billion pounds’ worth of elite talent and arguably the greatest manager ever … perhaps not very confident.

Conor Hazard, Plymouth goalkeeper and presumably one of those nine men in the YouGov poll who ticked ‘Yep!’, certainly believes his side can cause an upset at City. “There’s every chance a game like this could go to penalties – we’ll definitely do some preparation on that,” he cheered. “We’ve got 8,000 people going up there to support us so we don’t want to let anyone down. We did such a good job against Liverpool and hopefully we can do the same at the Etihad. We’re all really up for it. We know the task ahead and what we need to do to try and get a result there. That’s our aim.” You simply cannot argue, we’re told, with that sort of confidence. Gloomy bookmakers, at the time of publishing, are giving the Devon club around a 3% chance of victory in Manchester. And while that sounds low, remember that 7% of (unarmed) men in that poll thought they could beat a grizzly bear and 10% thought they could get the better of a crocodile. So, you know, there is that.

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