Plymouth’s new head coach Ian Foster expressed his delight at Argyle progressing to the FA Cup fourth round following a 3-1 home win over League Two strugglers Sutton.

Playmaker Morgan Whittaker took his tally to 14 goals with a stoppage-time strike and won a second-half penalty, converted by Ryan Hardie to make it 2-1 after Sutton striker Lee Angol had cancelled out Luke Cundle’s first-half opener.

Foster, appointed on Friday night, said: “It’s magical the FA Cup and I can’t wait to see who we get in the next round.

“For the majority I was pleased. I don’t think it was easy for the players having a new head coach walk into the building as late as I did. I thought they responded well to that.

“I just gave them a few messages around the game.

“The team were prepared really well in my absence but I just thought it was really important for me not to miss a wonderful opportunity to get on the touchline and be in and around the group today.

“I just made a couple of tactical nuances that I thought might help us and then just a couple of final messages around experiences of this type of game.

“The one thing I asked the players for was to play with a front-foot mentality. I wanted us to be aggressive without the ball, force errors.

“I wanted us to show control and patience in possession and recognise those opportunities to keep the ball, and fast attack when they are out of shape.

“It was nothing weird or wonderful, just adding something that I thought might be important.

“I was definitely able to impact from the side of the pitch.

“I’ve known Jason (Goodliffe) for a very long time and you have to win individual battles because they make it very hard for you.”

Interim Sutton boss Jason Goodliffe said: “We started a little bit slowly and the goal came at a difficult time but I was really pleased with the reaction after that.

“I thought by the end of the first half we started to show signs that we were capable of doing a bit more.

“The chat at half-time was telling them to believe a little bit more in what we could do going forward and we got ourselves a good goal and, at 1-1, I thought we were well in the game.

“We had some really good moments without necessarily being able to capitalise on those and the second goal comes out of nothing in terms of the penalty.

“Even then at 2-1, I still felt we were going to create something and have an opportunity but it didn’t quite fall for us unfortunately and I felt 3-1 at the end was a little bit harsh.

“The belief was coming into the players and particularly down the left hand side we had some really good moments, but just weren’t able to put it in the back of the net.

“There were times when the crowd were getting on the backs of Plymouth and it was quiet and it showed we were doing something right.

“Our fans were absolutely superb and didn’t stop singing all game. That really spurred us on in the second half playing towards them.

“Coming to a Championship team and leaving with a feeling of being hard done by shows how well the players have done.”

Sutton named former Cardiff boss Steve Morison as their new manager following the club’s cup exit.

Former Wales striker Morison left the Bluebirds in September 2022 after 11 months in charge and has this season guided Hornchurch to the top of the Isthmian League Premier Division.