Rooney rues 'naive' defending in latest Plymouth loss

Wayne Rooney has seen his Plymouth Argyle side win just twice in the past two months

Plymouth Argyle head coach Wayne Rooney has criticised his side's "naive" defending in their 2-1 home defeat by Swansea City.

The Welsh visitors had just two shots on target, but strikes from Jay Fulton and Liam Cullen were enough to inflict a third successive loss on Argyle.

Rooney's side have now won just once in their past 10 games and have slipped to second from bottom in the Championship.

"The goals we conceded were naive to say the least, and that was really disappointing from our point of view," he told BBC Radio Devon.

"I think there were positives within the game - certainly an improvement on the last two games - but ultimately tonight was about the result and we fell short."

Former Manchester United assistant manager Mike Phelan was on the Argyle bench for the first time since being appointed Rooney's number two on Sunday

Rooney is still missing key players - particularly in attack where Ibrahim Cissoko, Morgan Whittaker and Muhamed Tijani will all be out until early 2025, as will captain Joe Edwards.

But Rooney says the players that are left have to find resilience to stay in games.

"We know we're going through a difficult moment at the minute," he said.

"Sometimes when you are going through a difficult moment those small things become big things and seem to go against you, and certainly they have tonight.

"We have to fight through it. We're gradually getting players back, which is key for us.

"We're probably missing our front three still, missing our captain until the new year - that's a big loss and any team would feel it in this league, the quality of players we're missing.

"But it's the lads who have come in - it's a squad game. We have to do better - we have to find a way to show more resilience.

"I know we've got a lot of young players in there as well, but we have to become men very quickly because it doesn't get any easier. We've got a really tough game on Saturday, then a really tough fixture list over Christmas.

"We need to find a way to find that resilience and dig in and stay in games more than what we are doing."