Cleverley takes positives from narrow Bradford loss

Tom Cleverley says he is more positive about his Plymouth Argyle side's chances, despite suffering another defeat.

The Pilgrims were beaten 1-0 at home by high-flying Bradford City on Saturday after a conceding a controversial penalty.

Argyle's Jamie Paterson also had a an early goal ruled out for offside as the Pilgrims missed the chance to improve on being second-from-bottom of League One.

"Five weeks ago I was quite worried for where we were as a team, we didn't look like we could keep a clean sheet and we didn't look like scoring," Cleverley told BBC Radio Devon.

"Today should have been three clean sheets in our last four, barring a bizarre refereeing decision.

"The mentality and the togetherness is there, there's consistency of how we want to play which I was desperate to get to.

"We still have the problem of not scoring enough goals, especially when [Lorent] Tolaj is out of the team."

With top scorer Lorent Tolaj suspended Owen Oseni played up front supported by Bali Mumba.

Tolaj is the only Argyle player to have scored a goal since the end of September and Cleverley admitted that his side struggled at times without their Swiss attacking focal point: "I think we were a little bit lacking ideas, lacking quality, lacking confidence around their box.

"We knew that it could be an issue, we only had four league goals in the 18-man squad today, so that is a worry.

"But the only way is to put yourself in that position, keep putting yourself in that position, because I guarantee for Bali [Mumba], for Owen Dale, for Pato [Jamie Paterson], once the first league goal comes, two, three, four will come quickly after.

"Keep being there, keep being the ones putting yourself front and centre.

"Today, I thought we were really good, we made the team who were in the automatic promotion slots look quite average.

"I thought we were the better team and then up to their box where we lacked a little bit of everything."