Plymouth Argyle Championship Odds: Rooney's Greens 7/4 to fall

After staying up by the skin of their teeth last season, can Wayne Rooney's Plymouth Argyle have a more successful campaign in 2024/25?

Plymouth Argyle Championship odds

(Odds will display when market is available)

Plymouth's Championship return after a 13-year absence was a tense affair which almost ended in disaster, and the Green Army would dearly love their second season back in the second tier to be far more enjoyable.

It took a nerve-shredding 1-0 win against Hull on the final day to ensure Argyle stayed in the Championship which, given everything that had gone on throughout the season, had to go down as a triumph.

Now, the onus is on new manager Rooney to ensure his side have a less fretful 2024/25 and maybe start to look upwards rather than over their shoulders.

However, odds of 7/4 to be relegated - only newcomers Oxford United are shorter - and 10/1 to finish in the top six give a clearer, and perhaps more realistic, assessment of what is expected in the most south-westerly outpost in the division.

Plymouth are simply delighted to have another shot at the Championship after their fraught end to 2023/24, something which had looked unlikely earlier in the season.

Under their gung-ho and hugely popular boss Steven Schumacher, the man who had won them promotion in the first place, Plymouth had got off to a rip-roaring start, playing their part in thrillers galore and delighting their supporters.

They thumped six past Norwich, were battered at Leicester and played their part in any number of three, four, five and six-goal fixtures. They were the division's entertainers.

And then Schumacher left, just before Christmas, enticed away to Stoke, leaving a void which many Argyle diehards felt would be hard to fill - and so it proved.

Ian Foster came in, changed the style, and couldn't buy a win, lasting less than four months before Neil Dewsnip, part of the Home Park furniture, entered the dugout in caretaker mode to keep Plymouth up.

The relief at surviving was tangible, leaving Argyle fans to hope that the fun and frolics which marked their first half of the last campaign but were absent from the second, return under Rooney, whose appointment, it's fair to say, has divided opinions in the western end of Devon.

Rooney was in many eyes fortunate, given his flop at Birmingham, to get a shot at Plymouth where chairman Simon Hallett runs a steady, stable ship.

The former England skipper hasn't been handed a blank cheque to transform the club's fortunes and his dealings in the transfer market have hardly been eye-catching.

Then again, he has been spending most of the summer trying to keep Premier League-class keeper Michael Cooper and 19-goal top scorer Morgan Whittaker from a host of interested parties, and they are two players who Argyle would struggle without.

Rooney has tried to stamp his own style on the team but is acutely aware he needs a fast start to keep the Green Army on his side.

Schumacher took 22 points out of a possible 33 at a rocking Home Park before he headed for Staffordshire a week before Christmas. Foster and Dewsnip went on to pick up just 13 more between them from a possible 36, though none was more important than the three the latter acquired against Hull on May 4.

There are high hopes this season for a number of youngsters, including academy graduate Freddie Issaka, exciting new recruit Ibrahima Cissoko and former Manchester City star Darko Gyabi, who is back after a loan stint.

Indeed, it's a young squad in general, assembled against a backdrop of Argyle not being able to spend lavishly on bigger, more experienced names. Their budget would not allow for that and that's never been the Hallett way.

What the Green Army demand is effort and entertainment - under Schumacher they had success as well. But after last season's near miss, simply staying in the Championship would represent a great achievement in 2024/25.