August 2025 (Page 2)

The Mark Cooper era at Yeovil Town is over after the club confirmed he had been “relieved of his duties“ on Tuesday morning.

A relegation and a promotion to his name, but there’s always more to it than just the statistics. Here are our five conclusions on Mark Cooper’s pages in the Yeovil Town history books.

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Let’s remember there were good times

Nobody at Gloverscast HQ is jumping for joy that someone lost their job, that’s just not how we work.

From the moment we saw Cooper at Oldham during some of the darkest days of the bitter end of Chris Hargreaves’ reign, we thought there was a manager with a strong track record at National League and EFL level ready and waiting to take over.

Of course, the chaos going on off-the-pitch – the on-off sale by <NAME REDACTED> and the stewardship of Matt Uggla’s time -meant that first six months of his tenure never really stood a chance, more on that later.

Mark Cooper is one of only two managers to be promoted from all three National League divisions. During his time at Huish Park he added the National League South, he was the first title-winning manager of the men’s senior team since 2005 and the first to achieve promotion since 2013. That was stopping the rot, that was also giving an entire generation of Yeovil fans some joy. There will have been young Glovers at Truro (aka Gloucester) and at the trophy lift in the following game who have NEVER seen anything like tangible success in their lifetime.

Yes, the football was functional over stylish, but you can’t take that away the fact that Mark Cooper will forever be a title winner in the Yeovil Town history books and nor would we want to.

The stuff we didn’t see.

The Yeovil Town chapter of the Mark Cooper memoirs will be a chunky portion of a chunky book.

The stories he could tell of the owner who we do not name, the ‘stewards’ who tried to bring in their own players over his head, the recovery under the ownership of Martin Hellier and then the latest takeover by Prabhu Srinivasan. There’s enough in there to spin the heads of a less experienced manager.

There are probably only a few people who know the truth of everything that happened and undoubtedly he could (should?) have walked away at probably more than one point, but he believed he could wipe clean the only relegation on his CV and he did.

But the time was right.

You knew there was a ‘but’ coming.

For some, there was a thought that Cooper deserved every possible chance to give the Yeovil supporters and his employers what they needed, wanted, deserved at this level. It didn’t happen and the catastrophic collapse against Gateshead on August Bank Holiday Monday was the final nail in the coffin.

The match was a complete juxtaposition. Utterly sensational in the first half, utterly calamitous in the second. The way we crumbled from the minute Gateshead pulled a goal back in the first minute said everything you needed to know. There was no way he could have walked into training and instilled any real confidence in the group after that.

It’s not hard to wonder what leaders, characters and fans’ favourites like Josh Staunton, Matt Worthington and Frank Nouble are thinking today. You could see it in Frank’s reaction to all Gateshead’s goals and when player after player is taking to social media to like negative posts about the manager, you know there are issues.

The tactics were always substance over style but, even taken taking that in to consideration, they were baffling. The back four we played to such good effect on Monday replaced by a back three which never really worked.  We got through the best part of 100 players in his time in charge, leaders left and loanees came in like a revolving door.

If there were excuses last season, there were none this season. We recruited quality players, the club took on a backlash by giving the manager what he wanted by moving training north of Bristol, and even the Huish Park pitch shrunk. But, apart  from those first 45 minutes against Gateshead, we lacked so much in so many areas.

It hasn’t been good enough, particularly at home for maybe a calendar year. You cannot look beyond that and that is why the time was right to make a change.

For many of us, he never seemed to enjoy it

It’s often been said that Mark Cooper away from the microphone is a different person. Both Ben and Ian saw it at times over the past two-and-a-half years and fans who even partied with him after the National League South title win.

But the majority of Glovers’ fans saw a scowl, a dig at supporters and very rarely someone who looked like they enjoyed the job they were doing.

In today’s world, perception isn’t just people’s reality – it’s the loudest reality in the room.

The perception many fans had of Mark Cooper was not of a knowledgeable and passionate manager and that meant he could never rely on his relationship with supporters.

This steely-eyed approach led many fans feeling they never got a manager they believed in. Exiting the FA Cup at Chesham United, the indignity of the FA Trophy exit to W*ymouth and an 18th place league finish last season left no credit in the bank as the distance grew.

It could have been different, but it wasn’t.

So, where next?

Well, the new ownership team has chosen action over words. What happens next and where we go as a football club in the short and hopefully medium-long term future is down to them.

It’s a big responsibility and one they should not rush in to.

We hope to learn from those around us. Forest Green Rovers changed manager in the search of style AND substance, and differing budgets aside, we should be thinking the same.

We have to find a manager with a balance of charisma, character, nous, form, availability, knowledge and so much more.

Yeovil is a special club and takes a special kind of person to be successful here.

All kinds of names will come and go through the minds of those at the club; you will already have heard plenty.

But having some knowledge of what it takes to be successful at Yeovil is important, maybe not as the front man, but in that group somewhere, that knowledge has to be embedded.

It’s a big moment – and we’ve had quite a few of those in the last 12 years – and one we cannot afford to get wrong.