David Coates (Page 5)

On Friday 15th October, we broadcast a long interview with Nicholas Brayne, Chief Strategy Advisor at Yeovil Town FC, which went on for almost two hours and covered a huge range of topics which we at the Gloverscast felt fans wanted answers on. Since the interview was broadcast, there have been a wide range of opinions (both positive and negative) about some of the things which Nicholas said and  a request for a transcript of the interview to be made available.

You can still (and forever) listen to the interview in here – click HERE is you want to do that – and here the unedited, unfiltered words which Nicholas spoke. However, to try and make it easier to understand and digestible, we have broken this down in to sections which cover the wide range of topics which were discussed.

In this second posting, we bring you Nicholas’ comments on off-the-field matters including the investment under owner Prabhu Srinivasan, the latest on the ownership of land at Huish Park and his thoughts on the club’s community outreach since the takeover.

Investment by the ownership group

“I have heard people say a few times ‘why doesn’t Prabhu put money in to the club?’ That one irks me a little bit because we are losing a significant amount of money every year, I know how much money he is pumping in to this club. If anyone does not think it is significant, please turn up at Huish Park and we will talk about investment. The elevation on the budget is sizeable in terms of what he has put forward. That went forward under Danny (Webb), but he obviously did not have time to spend it so we are investing it now, so there is a lot of money going in to this club. The question is are we spending it properly. I know what Halifax’s budget is, I know what Barnet’s budget was last year, I know what people are spending.

• Energy: I have become an energy expert because of these price rises. We had a five-year locked in contract and we are facing a cliff edge in November, so I have been working to get us a better deal in terms of energy and a better mix. We are looking at a situation where our energy prices are going to double. 
• Sport England Loan: Under <NAME OF FORMER CHAIRMAN REDACTED>, a loan was taken out with Sport England, but to the best of my knowledge not a single penny has been paid off that loan until last month when we put down £117,000. To try and eat in to that capital, we paid £117,000 off the loan. There are twice a year payments which we pay. There is a payment plan in place for a period of time to take that away. I have to be fair to Sport England and where we are at the moment, we will be paying that off for a considerable amount of time. There are things we would like to do to make that more manageable, but we are facing two very sizeable payments every year that are just shy of £100,000 each, then they peter off.

Now we are dealing with a cocktail of crap, but we knew we were going to have that. We went in to it with our eyes open.

Q. We know of Prabhu, his wife Bhavna and son Sahil, executive chairman Stuart Robins and yourself, is anyone else involved in ‘the ownership group’?
A. “No, that is everyone. There are no other investors other than Inflection Holdings (the company which Prabhu Srinivasan used to take over the club in May), we are pumping the money in. This is all coming from Prabhu, Bhavna and the family. Most owners value a football club at how much money they have put in over the years and how they want to get that back which is the easiest way of it. Most people know they are pumping money in knowing they are not going to get that money back. You would potentially make money out of promotion to the EFL and perhaps Yeovil returning as a League One club. You can look at cultural factors of football becoming more sustainable, the academic perspective is the appetite for debt is lessening because there are fewer investors coming forward. Whether that is true or not is an interesting debate. So, to answer the question, this is money going in to keep the club going rather than an investment where you are seeking a return.

“There is no-one else, there is no-one in the wings. We have not had this conversation, but that is not to say if someone rocked up and said ‘I have got transformative money that could do something amazing for the club’ I am sure we would want to have that conversation. I talk to people all the time who have an interest in football. 99% are there to waste our time, 1% may come and have a meaningful conversation and 0.5% might transact, so it’s a low conversion rate. But we have not had any of those conversations at Huish Park and nor have we introduced anyone like that in to the conversation or sought to have those conversations. I am leaving the opportunity open for future years, but it is not something we have done up until this point.”

Q. We have not seen or heard much from Prabhu since he was last in the UK, why have they not been back?
A. “It is difficult for the family when they want to be there to provide support. Bhavna and Prabhu are mainly in the United Arab Emirates (specifically Dubai) and you have Sahil who is in New York, so it is challenging for them to do this from afar. What prohibits them from being here more is that their visa allows them to do 90 days in the UK and they are now around 55 days each and we have only had the club three or four months. They want to be in the country as much as possible, for example, they are coming over for the Mayor’s Ball (held on Saturday 15^th November). They have to look at when something significant is going to happen and leave something in the bank for unforeseen circumstances.”

Companies House filing

A little extra context on this point because those supporters not on social media may have missed it, but on October 9th the Companies House listing of Yeovil Town Holdings showing the allotment of £500,000 worth of shares in the business. We asked Nicholas about what it means.

“We have a holding company that owns the football club and we are pumping money in through Yeovil Town Holdings Ltd to flow down and meet the challenge of running the football club. The difference in the costs are variable, for example, if we have more home games in a certain month the difference will be less, so what you are retrospectively seeing is the mechanics of the money coming in and how it has been allotted in terms of shareholding in the company as it filters down.

“This is an injection of capital coming in. Nick Crittenden (the club accountant) will do a forecast of what we need every month and we will pump the money in and it falls like rain in to the football club. That is how we keep it funded. Football clubs make a significant loss, a fantastic month for us would be writing a cheque for under £200,000 to keep it going, we have been writing cheques north of that for quite some time.”

Ownership of the land at Huish Park

“If you knew what the council had done in terms of the transaction to keep the football club going, their adaptability with the current group, they have been fantastic. It has always been our extend the terms of the buy-back option, we wanted to push that back to give ourselves a bit of breathing space. The question is ‘why don’t you just buy back the site?’ The truth is when you are looking at a site like that and the amount of money it would cost to buy it back, it is right to put in place an assessment of what you can do with it. It is also important when you consider other partners who may come in and, for example, build a hotel, paddle courts or a wonderful trampoline park! We are working with and have had detailed work done with one particular party about what could be done on the site, and that helps us with where we go with the council and how we then bring Huish Park in to the ownership of the club. If we rushed out and did it overnight, it is no advantage to the club or the ownership group.

Q. Would supporters be consulted on any future development of the site?

A. “There has to be an element of consultation with reality underpinning it. We are open to creative thoughts, but there has to be reality in how we actually operate it. When there is a plan in place we have to have engagement because why would we want something in place where people turn up and say ‘that is just ghastly!’? As a slight caveat, there will have to be a statutory consultation and I don’t people to think their criticisms or support have not been heard because we have run a pseudo consultation, not the official one. So within the parameters of doing things properly within the parameters of planning law, I cannot see why we would not be talking to supporters. You would have extensive consultation, that would be communicated widely, and it is in our interest to run a public event where people can come and see the plans.

“On the site, there will need to be an element of residential development. The reality is to develop that site there are things you are able to do and things you are not able to do. Let us say we want to build a destination there, there would be objections there on a major scale because you are sucking business out of Yeovil town centre. What is needed at the moment is housing, but it doesn’t need to be the whole site. We could put forward a mixed development where you have some residential, maybe a hotel, some kind of leisure development which would make Huish Park a community focus point. There are certain boxes which have to be ticked and at the moment that work is being done and scoped by quite sizeable people who work in that area. We would then have to work with partners because as an ownership we do not know the first thing about building houses, for example.

“Will we see change at the football club? Absolutely. How will that change benefit the club? It will draw capital in to the football club, but the bigger challenge is how does that capital keep benefiting the club by having a residual tail on it? Because it could just come in to the club and it just gets burned because in football we burn money for fun. So we have to think how we do it cleverly, that is the conversation and that is why we extended the buy-back option. Those are the conversations we are having now. Long term sustainability is what we are talking about. For example, if you developed a hotel, there are lots of ways to do it. You could bring in a firm and buy in to that brand and the club runs the hotel as a number of clubs do or you could sell to an investor. This is not as simple as just throwing up a hotel, but there has to be a mixture of things that brings money in to the football club and things that may give us a one-off hit and gives us the money to invest in other things. At the end of this, I need to be able to point at things which have made us more sustainable than when we had this conversation on 15^th October 2025.

“What looks like successful ownership? Reuniting the club with the stadium is massive and if we came out of this and we are still in the National League but the club now owns the stadium, that would be frustrating but it does add a pillar of sustainability. These are the real things we feel we can do which is away from sporting jeopardy.”

On Friday 15th October, we broadcast a long interview with Nicholas Brayne, Chief Strategy Advisor at Yeovil Town FC, which went on for almost two hours and covered a huge range of topics which we at the Gloverscast felt fans wanted answers on. Since the interview was broadcast, there have been a wide range of opinions (both positive and negative) about some of the things which Nicholas said and  a request for a transcript of the interview to be made available.

You can still (and forever) listen to the interview in here – click HERE is you want to do that – and here the unedited, unfiltered words which Nicholas spoke. However, to try and make it easier to understand and digestible, we have broken this down in to sections which cover the wide range of topics which were discussed.

This first posting will cover on the field matters including the sacking of Mark Cooper as manager, the arrival and sudden departure of Danny Webb, the decision to appoint Richard Dryden as manager until the end of the season, and the challenges of player recruitment.

The appointment and departure of Danny Webb

Richard (Dryden, manager) is a coach which I know three other clubs were in for in the summer when we took him, he has a reputation for improving players and a lot of managers that have worked with Richard who will tell you that how he works is impressive. When we decided we were going to call time on Mark (Cooper), it was a short week and we felt Richard was the best option (as interim manager) with Chris Todd as number two. Richard showed ambition from the start, he wanted the job and he had a very clear plan about how he was going to go about it. We saw an improved performance in those matches he took charge of as interim manager and I thought he did well.

“In the background we were speaking to a number of people and I travelled with Stuart (Robins, executive chairman) and Sahil (Srinivasan, the son of owner, Prabhu) and we spoke to a number of managers, two in particular and there were a huge number of other calls. There were a number of managers that I would have loved to have got to Huish Park, but they had aspirations in other directions and a couple of others were in the mix and there was a shortlist.

“But, Danny was a charismatic character with a good track record and he hit the ground at Huish Park and people liked his open approach, he was very different to Mark Cooper, there was a lot to like. We backed him financially and in terms of his plans prior to him coming through the door. Then what happened, happened and he had that moment of realisation and he decided to stand down for family and personal reasons which was quite extraordinary to deal with. That whole period felt like a whirlwind and that is why we wanted to go back to a period of stability and calm by appointing Richard as manager until the end of the season.”

Q. Have you reflected on the process you undertook to appoint Danny Webb and do you think there is anything you would have done differently?

A. “We have reflected and learnt from that process. But how do you do due diligence about someone’s state of mind. There is a remit about how far I can go because I have to be respectful of someone’s actions about their decisions. But, I know we did a very thorough assessment and spoke to a number of people and there were not a single red flag. Stuart went back over everything we had done to see how we got to this point and the assessment was that it was difficult to say ‘we should have seen this coming.’ I cannot honestly pinpoint a moment.

“For someone who was inside the process it still feels bizarre. Let me be clear, I am not insinuating Danny Webb has mental health issues, but you do not always know what someone is thinking and feeling, the personal challenges they face. When we knew Danny came to a decision, we wanted to make sure he was okay on a human level. I thought we had made the right decision, we obviously did not because what happened, happened. I would love to be able to pinpoint the things that went wrong, but I genuinely can’t.”

Q. Danny Webb has subsequently spoken to an interview with the Derbyshire Times – read more HERE – and said that the decision was down to ‘football and non-football reasons’ – what are the football reasons he is talking about?

A. “I have not got a clue. I am acutely aware it has been suggested he was not allowed to bring he was not allowed to bring players or staff in and I understand people have a desire to know more, you can’t turn that curiosity off, it’s what brings people to this club. But, he could have brought in the players he wanted, that is why Andrew (Oluwabori) joined, I worked with Danny to bring Andrew down working with Marcus (Stewart) and Exeter. There was money, quite a bit more, and in terms of changes to the backroom staff, those changes had started. I can put my hand on my heart and say we gave Danny everything he asked for. If anyone feels differently, come out and say it.”

Richard Dryden’s appointment

“One of the reasons we did not give Richard the job when we appointed Danny was because the feeling from everyone was that we wanted to go in a different direction, we were looking at a more youthful approach and Richard was not that. Let’s be honest, Richard was Mark Cooper’s man, so from a PR perspective that did not feel the right fit. It was not personal, some of it was based on that he was not the right man.

“He had a 50% win record in the games he took charge of as interim manager, we wanted stability and we recognised that we had to bring players in. If we were looking for a new manager in a month’s time, it is difficult to bring players in. We wanted to support the players who were in a state of flux, we had the situation with Chris Todd who had said he wanted to go to Eastleigh. So there was a number of things we were dealing with and it felt like we should back Richard until the end of the season.

“I walk around Huish Park and I meet hundreds of Mystic Megs who all have this wonderful ability to fortell what would have happened if it had not been Richard. Come forth Mystic Megs and tell me what would have happened, what would you have done in my position?

“When we have the ability to brings someone until the end of the season, look at Jerry (Gill, assistant manager) and look at a different way of doing things. Richard does have a contract until the end of next season, so if you say we are going to do this until the end of next season and it does not work out, the pay out is going to be sizable. We had a pay out when we got rid of Mark Cooper. So to protect the club, we said we would hedge our bets and see if we could make it work.

“Richard is a very good coach and he had a two-year deal with us as a coach and we have stepped him up as a manager. He will be here and is part of our long-term thinking, but there is a balancing act to do here in terms of supporting him and making sure he has a place to go back to if things do not work out. At the moment we are trying to find the right pathway forward and be analytical in how we do that but also to protect the club’s position rather than saying ‘we have a crisis on their hands, let’s go and get the next person.’

“The reason the plan changed from wanting a more youthful approach was down to circumstances and knowing what managers were out there. We went through the process and exhausted down to Danny, Richard and a couple of others that we liked and those couple of others we did not think were better than Richard.”

Director of Football

“People often think money is always the solution, but if money is the solution please explain Barnet or Halifax to me. To talk about a Director of Football or a Head of Recruitment, someone who is looking at things in a more analytical way, that is something I find very interesting and conversations have been had in that direction. That is not something that happens overnight, that is a structure.

“That is a project where you are buying players in to the football club for the club, not the manager which is something I favour and there are several examples of where that has brought great results. Gateshead is one example over that period of time where they were doing very well, they took a bigger picture view as to how they were recruiting. That is another reason why we did not want to jump in again and that is what we were looking at under Danny Webb. But it takes time to get that structure in place.

“I understand everyone wants things yesterday and they have seen an ownership group based in Dubai and think they must have loads of money. We took the club over in the middle of the summer and did not have the benefit of planning in the Spring regarding player recruitment. We had a manager in place in Mark (Cooper) who has a much more traditional view in terms of how the club should be managed, but going forward we are at a point where we feel we can do things in a more dynamic, modern way. I am not going to say you are going to see great results and changes overnight.

“Jerry and Richard have both been in this situation before and are well versed in bringing players in. The rest of us, our role is transitory in terms of the help we are offering. Every single person who is helping would benefit from someone who could help with recruitment, we have a couple of scouts we have taken on board to look at players. So if we like the look of someone, we have to watch them a few times, that kind of stuff is happening. But some of those may not come good until the end of the season, some of them may come good a bit sooner, but I think most will come good towards the end of the season. Why would you pay quite a chunky fee now when you can wait until the end of the season when you can get them free. Those conversations are being had all the time.”

Player recruitment

“We are trying to add pieces of quality to the squad, I felt the squad was too small. I still buy the idea of a manageable squad size, but the squad size going in to the season was too small. We needed coverage and that is what we were going to ask. The biggest hurdle in signing players is geography and managers. Geographically it is a challenge because you are often talking to young men with families and for them to move their kids down is challenging when they are looking at a one or maximum two-year contract.

“(The decision to move first-team training to) Bristol has made that challenge easier, I can pick out one or two players who would not have come if we were not training in Bristol. When you have players who are free agents now, you have to look at are they fit, why are they free agents now, what is the truth about why they have not been picked up? So we are doing a lot of work to look for people and then getting them to come and spend time with the squad, train with us and then we will make a decision.

“We have improved what we are doing with strength and conditioning and bringing in a new, very talented individual who has been helping us there, so there are things happening behind-the-scenes.”

Q. Who has been helping support the management team in player recruitment?
A. Stuart has been helping, I have been helping, Sahil has been helping. (On Wednesday) night we were trying to sort Michee Efete out and talking to one other who we would like to progress, so we has been a real team effort by the ownership group to try and help. Richard (Dryden, manager) and Jerry (Gill, assistant manager) have been phenomenal in terms of how they have gone about this and we are working all hands to the pump. People have been magnificent in terms of what has been happening.

The dismissal of Mark Cooper

“I knew there was a sense of apathy towards Mark when we got to the club. There were issues around the scenes which meant it made sense to look after Mark in the summer and go in to the new season, some issues we inherited which would have put us in a compromising position if we had not taken that action.

“He had a marginally increased budget so he was going in to the season with a strong hand and he had the strategy with moving the training to Bristol which was inherited, so it felt at that time that was the right course of action.

“It felt inevitable after the fragility we saw at the beginning of the season. If you cast your mind back to the game at Braintree, we peppered the goal but we lost 1-0. It just felt inevitable that we were going to play like that and come away with a 1-0 loss. I didn’t come away when we were 3-0 up at half-time at home to Gateshead thinking we were going to lose 4-3, but when the first and second goal went in you were just like ‘I know what is coming here.’”