It’s match day and Yeovil make the trip to Solihull Moors today in what is a huge game for both teams. Ian spoke to Stewart Westley, NLTV commentator and the man behind Solihull’s match preview shows.
Yeovil Town have announced the signing of Otis Khan on loan from Oldham Athletic until May 5th.
The Pakistan international returns to the Glovers for a second stint having previously represented the club between 2016 and 2018.
He played 87 times, scoring 18 goals under Darren Way.
Khan tips the number of loanees at the club beyond the five allowed in the match day squad, so one of: Frankie Terry, Kyle Ferguson, Kyrell Wilson, Ciaran McGuckin and Ryan McLean will have to sit in the stands – potentially two should Sean McGurk return to the club from injury.
Welcome back to Somerset, Otis.
It’s been a quiet week at Yeovil Town FC – and maybe that’s no bad thing.
Ian is away ill, so Ben and Dave are back with Chris Fox to chat about Solihull Moors away this Saturday afternoon and plenty more besides including your #GCQs
We’ve had a lot of love come our way these past few days and weeks and there’s never a bad time to say ‘Thank You’ to all our support for both the podcast and website, we mean it, we’re incredibly grateful.
Yeovil Town Defender Dom Bernard has said that performances like we saw against York City will bring about results.
The Glovers wen’t down 1-0 to the Minstermen, but put in a good enough display to convince the former Forest Green man that the points will pick up sooner rather than later.
Speaking to BBC Radio Somerset’s Josh Perkins, he said;
“Football is results based isn’t it? You feel that there’s games where you might play really bad, and you pick a 1-0 and take it all day, so in the end it’s the results that count,
But, we’ve had a hard schedule with Halifax, York and Barnet, hard running Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday-Tuesday, so you’ve got to take that into account,
But there’s no blame on it, at the end of the day you’re out there giving it your all, that performance against York, if we implement that against any opposition, you’re bound to take something out of the game.
We were actually really unfortunate in the end, some of the chances we had, sometime it comes down to a penalty, and those things happen.
But there’s no excuse on our behalf, we obviously want to win as many games and we think we can go against the top teams.”
This weekend, the Glovers head to Solihull, who sit just a point above the Glovers and a couple of places above in mid table and Bernard is expecting a tough fixture.
“[Solihull] have got Matty Taylor as manager now, he’s gone there to try and implement his ideas, when he was manager at Wealdstone, they played good football, and they’re probably in a stage where they’re trying to mix it up, they can do that, they can mix it up both ways,
I think at this stage of the season any game is going to be tough because different teams are playing for different reasons and I’m sure they probably look at us and think it’s going to be tough game as well and we’ve got what we want to play for, but they’re a well drilled side and hopefully we bring our performance like we did against York.
Obviously, we were unfortunante not to get a result there, but if we perform like that we’ll be alright.”
With plenty of new faces joining the group in recent weeks, Bernard is quickly becoming one of the more experienced members of the group and has taken a senior role in making sure the new recruits are settling in.
“I know Marcel [Lavinier] from playing with him, I like to introduce myself early, get to the lads, I like to get along with everyone really, get in there, make them feel welcome, which I think all the lads do to be fair, and make the team cohesive and really bond.
Especially in this period of time, there’s only eight games left, so, short little run to the end and the more welcome they feel the more settled they’ll be.”
Mark Cooper has said that he is hopeful that he will be able to call upon four or five of his most experienced players in the coming weeks after injury,.
Speaking to BBC Radio Somerset’s Josh Perkins ahead of the game this weekend, he said he was grateful to how the younger, newer players were adapting to life in Green and White, but that he hopes more players will be available soon.
“Well, I spoke about this, [the new recruits ] are all young lads that bring something different, so they’re trying to make their way in the game. So for us to try and replace Jake Wannell, Aaron Jarvis, Morgan Williams. Michael Smith, James Plant, Sean McGurk, to try and replace those players like for like, is impossible at this stage of the season in terms of experience. So the only other route is to try and get younger players that are making their way in the game, desperate to get some game time, and they bring something different, but at the moment, they’re learning the game, so they will make mistakes, and sometimes they’ll be better coming off the bench.
Through circumstance, they more or less all that to play last week against Boston and and it was a tough environment for them to play in, not a nice nice environment, and that knocks their confidence.
Then Boston go to a team in the playoffs and score three there. So it’s a tough environment. So we have to be careful with them, but until we get more frontline players back, we have to give them all the support we can and trying to put them in the right position, in the right times, so they can really help too.”
As for when we might expect players to return, we are now into waiting “weeks” rather than “months” before we get players back from the physio room.
“It’s day to day, really, where you know, every time the physio rings me, I’m frightened to death to answer it, because you know somebody else is going to be up for six weeks. This is just a moment in time. It happens at certain teams, in certain seasons that you look at Tottenham all of their top players were injured. And that affects, it really affects and we just got to ride it out, and hopefully Wannell and Smith may be back in the next few days. Then we’ve been looking at Jarvis and Williams probably within a couple of weeks. So yeah, so hopefully there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
On Solihull, who the Glovers come up against on Saturday, Mark Cooper said that they, like us, had been through plenty of change this season and that it is guaranteed to be a tough fixture.
“They’ve had lots of change, obviously, change of the Manager [who] went to the EFL to Barrow, done a great job.
They brought in Matty [Taylor] from Wealdstone. It’s always tough, when you go into a team that are used to a manager’s way, you have to try and change and adapt to the way you want it.
They’ve had a turn around of players, they’ve had some injuries, so it’s been tough, but they’ve had a little run, I think, three unbeaten. Like I always say, there’s never any easy games at this level, never. And we’re expecting a really tough game, but I’m sure they would have watched us against York, and they’ll be expecting a really tough encounter as well.”
This Saturday marks Non-League day in the UK and few managers have had the level of success outside the EFL than Mark Cooper and he said that it represents the ‘lifeblood’ of the game in this country.
“If I give my experience, Dan Burn was a non-league player at Darlington, when I was a manager, I gave him his debut at 16, and I actually did an interview saying that he would play for England one day. I didn’t actually probably mean it at the time, but we were trying to raise his fee for when we sold him.
But that the game is littered with stories like that, of how many players have gone into non league to get some experience or have started in on me? So it’s vital that that it is celebrated. It’s just a shame that there’s not, there’s not as much funding coming down the pyramid as probably there should be, when you see how much money there is at the top end of the game with the Premier League and the wages.
I know once you’re once you’re in there, turkeys are not going to vote for Christmas are they? You know, they’re not going to vote to drip down more money down the pyramid. But I think we have to look at it and say, you realise where the actual lot of talent does come from. I give you actually.”
Yeovil Town are off to the Midlands for their National League Premier Clash against Solihull Moors and Sebastian Stockbridge won’t be far behind.
This will be Mr Stockbridge’s first National League game of the season, with all of his previous commitments being in the EFL.
In 24 games across Leagues One and Two he’s dished out, 107 Yellow cards, two reds and pointed at the spot half a dozen times for good measure.
A vastly experienced official, you have to go all the way back to 2016 before you can find his last game in charge of the Glovers, a 4-1 defeat to Plymouth Argyle; Nathan Smith, Ryan Hedges and Kevin Dawson all saw yellow that day.
Now, you may remember that fantastic 4-3 win over Barnet, also in 2016… well, Seb was right in the middle of that one too!
That does mean he awarded the penalty to John Akinde, but Liam Walsh and Harry Cornick meant that it didn’t really matter.
As far as I can tell, he’s only taken charge of one Solihull Moors game – a second round clash between Hartlepool and Solihull in the FA Cup which went the way of Pools on penalties.
He will be assisted by Daniel Flynn and Thomas Staten, Wayne Gray (not that one) will be on fourth official duties.
Solihull Moors FC (First Team) v Yeovil Town FC (First Team)
National League – Premier
Referee: Stockbridge, Sebastian
Assistant Referee: Flynn, Daniel
Assistant Referee: Staten, Thomas
Fourth Official: Gray, Wayne
It’s time the March edition of the YeoGov Survey (here’s a reminder of the results from February) and once again we want your thoughts about the four weeks that have just been.
In those four weeks, the Glovers turned form around to beat Tamworth, Maidenhead and draw with Southend before defeats against Barnet, Halifax, Boston United and York City this past weekend.
It’s the usual questions around performance around the club and the optional matchday experience one and this month we want to know if the club are performing as you expected for the first season in the National League.
It wasn’t the worst defeat in the world on Saturday, but a defeat it still was. Ian, Dave and Ben chat about the defeat to York and take your questions.
The results of February’s YeoGov survey are in. Thanks to the 252 supporters who shared their thoughts.
As always we have the usual questions with the scores out of 7 below..
How do you think Mark Cooper is doing? 2.80
How do you think the players have performed? 3.04
What would you score the ownership/board? 3.15
What would you score the communication from the club? 3.54
What would you score the match day experience this month? 3.42
We also asked the question, How important is it to you that Yeovil Town FC owns the land at Huish Park? to which the result was overwhelming with a score of 6.37 out of 7. The land has always been seen as a key unlock to secure the long term future of the football club and, clearly, it remains of vital importance to supporters.
