Plymouth Argyle v Burnley

This weekend sees the Claret make the long trip to Home Park to take on fellow high-flyers, Plymouth Argyle. Ian Holloway’s men currently lie just one place below Burnley, occupying sixth place in the table.

The Pilgrims are in good form, picking up 10 points from the last 4 games, including wins over Norwich, Coventry and Derby, and a point at Barnsley. Barry Hayles who scored in Tuesday’s 2-2 draw at Oakwell is Plymouth’s main injury concern with a groin injury.

Nick Chadwick, linked with the Clarets last season is struggling and midfielder Lee Hodges will certainly miss out as he recovers from a medial ligament injury. The Clarets are expected to be without defender John McGreal as he awaits scan results on a knee injury, with Stephen Foster expected to step in, and Wayne Thomas sits out the final game of his four match ban.

This fixture last season saw the Clarets go down 1-0 courtesy of a Micky Evans goal as we fell into the relegation zone during a poor spell, but the scoreline was reversed at the Turf in early February as we finally won after 7 game without a win. Michael Ricketts scored on his home debut that day, and followed that up with another away at Ipswich… and that was about it for him.

Ian Holloway is the man in charge at Home Park these days, and we leave you this week with some quotes from the part-time comedian:

"To put it in gentleman's terms if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good looking and some weeks they're not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She weren't the best looking lady we ended up taking home but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee"

- on an "ugly" win against Chesterfield.

"When my wife first saw Marc for the first time, she said he was a fine specimen of a man. She says I have nothing to worry about, but I think she wants me to buy her a QPR shirt with his name on the back for Christmas."

- on QPR's new Danish striker Marc Nygaard.

"I don't see the problem with footballers taking their shirts off after scoring a goal? They enjoy it and the young ladies enjoy it too. I suppose that’s one of the main reasons women come to football games, to see the young men take their shirts off. Of course they'd have to go and watch another game because my lads are as ugly as sin."

- Ian Holloway about the new rule restricting footballers from removing their shirts during a match.

"It was lucky that the linesman wasn't stood in front of me as I would have poked him with a stick to make sure he was awake."

- Holloway states his opinion about the linesman's performance in a game against Bristol City.

"I want to try and spread the support with my Bristol connection. Rovers are in the bottom division so why can't I try and convert some of them into Argyle fans? We're in the West Country so it's not that far away. Only two and a half hours away in a slow car, an hour and a half in a fast one - or 10 minutes in a rocket! As long as you aimed it right, you'd be down here really quickly. Don't land it on the pitch, though, because you'd ruin it!"

Up the Clarets!