Brian Barry-Murphy delighted with Cardiff’s quick progress

Brian Barry-Murphy has been delighted with Cardiff’s early progress after the League One leaders continued their fine start with a 4-0 win over Plymouth.

Quickfire goals just before the break from Ryan Wintle and Chris Willock sparked the game into life. Rubin Colwill scored a third just after the restart with sub Isaak Davies slamming home a fourth in added time.

“It was a really good day for us and I’m very happy to get a win against a team who we knew would be dangerous opponents,” said Bluebirds boss Barry-Murphy.

“I think the scoreline is probably a little bit deceiving in terms of how many problems they caused us.

“But any day when you score four goals at home and give the supporters so much joy is a really happy one for us.

“It’s pleasing that they’re making such improvements so early in the season.

“When you come together in such a short period of time, it takes time to build a way of playing but we’re very pleased with the overall performance of the team.

“The guys at the back were protected a lot by the intensity of how we press; the midfield players covered a lot of distance today and they have to do so to give ourselves the chance to restrict an opponent as dangerous as Plymouth to so few chances.”

Argyle’s 3,000-strong following may have felt hard done by – with what looked like a possible handball by Cardiff’s Cian Ashford in the build-up to Wintle’s goal, while Willock and Colwill’s goals both went in via unfortunate deflections off centre-back Brendan Wiredu.

Plymouth head coach Tom Cleverley said: “For me the scoreline was justified. I can’t sit here and say there wasn’t four goals between the teams.

“I think there was a gulf in quality between the two sides. So how do we bridge that gap? That is by doing the basics well; tackling, running, communicating, details, set pieces, that’s how we could bridge that gap today – and we didn’t.

“They did that side of the game better than us – hence a convincing win for Cardiff today.

“We’re on a different stage of our journey to what the opposition are but we didn’t do the basics well enough.

“We all need to look at ourselves; what we can do better, whether it’s the players we recruit, the work we’re doing on the training field, the mentality of the players. We need to analyse why there is such a big gulf between two teams who finished pretty similarly last season – and strive to get better.”