Plymouth Argyle cannot afford to repeat Aston Villa transfer that led Greens to Bradford City’s door | OneFootball

Tyreik Wright was a disappointment during his time at Home Park, and left the club after just 18 months

After struggling in front of goal for large parts of the 2024/25 campaign, Plymouth Argyle will be wanting to add to their attacking personnel this month, although the Greens will need to learn from their mistakes in the mid-season transfer window of the past.

For all the good things that the Pilgrims have done in picking up top players on bargain deals in the past, there have also been a fair few players who have failed to reach the heights expected of them after moving to Home Park, with their time as a Green amounting to not much at all.

With their Championship existence hanging in the balance at time of writing, the Devon outfit know they cannot afford to make any mistakes in the market in January, or they will undo a lot of the good work done to get them back into the second tier under the ownership of Simon Hallett.

One ill-fated deal that sticks out as much as any is the purchase of Tyreik Wright form Aston Villa this time two years ago, with the wide man struggling to make much impact at all during his time in the south west.

Plymouth Argyle move for Tyreik Wright ends in disappointment

Having excelled on loan with Bradford City in League Two for the first-half of the 2022/23 campaign, Argyle swooped to bring Wright into the club on a permanent deal during the mid-season transfer window, with the hope being that he could add plenty to the wide areas as Argyle sought promotion to the Championship.

There was plenty of excitement surrounding the move, with boss Steven Schumacher telling the club’s official website at the time: “He is an exciting player who enjoys taking people on and will get the Green Army off their seats.

“He has explosive power, really good ability, and hopefully is going to be a very good player for us. He will offer an option for us in various different positions, as he is very versatile.”

Hopes and expectations failed to come to fruition though, as Wright looked a shadow of the player that excelled at Valley Parade, with a slow start obviously knocking his confidence, which in turn left him failing to perform whenever he was given minutes on the pitch.

Try as they might, Argyle just couldn’t get a tune out of the Republic of Ireland youth international, and while his teammates will have been celebrating promotion to the second tier, Wright must have known the writing was already on the wall in terms of his future at Home Park.

Having struggled to make an impact in League One, Wright was even more of a fish out of water in the Championship, with a smattering of late cameos all that came his way in the first-half of the season, before a return to Bradford on loan was secured last January.

Upon returning to familiar territory, the wide man started to produce some of his best football once again, with two goals in 14 matches keeping the Bantams in the play-off hunt until late into the season, before he made the move permanent in the summer just gone, with just 503 league minutes as an Argyle player to his name.

Plymouth Argyle cannot afford another Tyreik Wright repeat

With so much hanging on this current transfer window, Argyle cannot afford to bring in any passengers like they did with Wright, with every addition needing to pull their weight in order for them to stand a fighting chance in beating the drop.

The Home Park outfit were also guilty of some hastily thought-through additions this time last year after Ian Foster was appointed, and 12 months on, they need to finally learn their lesson and aim for quality purchases that will make an immediate impact.

Bringing in Michael Baidoo [pictured] on a club-record deal has already shown that Simon Hallett and his club mean business this month, and if the Ghanaian has the impact that is expected of him, things may slowly start turning around before too long at the Theatre of Greens.