Ian Perkins (Page 27)

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Yeovil Town have ranked 111th in the country in the Fair Game Index 2024.

The report which is ‘based on extensive research’ ranks every all of the clubs from the Premier League to National League North/South.

Each club is scored out of 100, with 40 marks coming from financial sustainability, 30 from good governance, 20 from equality and ethical standards and 10 from fan and community engagement.

For Financial Sustainability, the Yeovil scored 9.1 out of 30. For Governance the club scored highest in NLS with a score of 9.8 out of 30. On quality and ethical standers Yeovil scored 3.6 out of 20 and on fan and community engagment was 2 out of 10. 

A final score of 24.5 out of 100 ranked Yeovil 111th in the country.

Tonbridge Angels topped the charts in National League South and York City topped the National League… 

Financial Sustainability includes 38 touchpoints and includes measures such as accounting, debt, ticket pricing and sponsorship.

Good Governance draws on 55 different metrics and covers areas such as board structure, accountability and transparency.

Equality and ethical standards has the most touchpoints – 106 – and covers a very broad range of topics from ethics to sexism, and from environmental impact to racism.

Fan and Community Engagement has 30 touchpoints, including fan representation and community investment.

Niall Couper, the CEO of Fair Game said: “Football is far from perfect but with the likelihood of an incoming football regulator there is a real chance to change it for the better.   

“To deliver real and meaningful change we need to understand the problems. We’ve designed the Fair Game Index to do exactly that and help reshape the game we love. 

“It is the most comprehensive analysis yet of what it means to be a well-run club, and we’re calling on the authorities, the Football Regulator and football’s governing bodies to work with us.”

Read the full report here

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It was an entertaining Tuesday night at Huish Park and Jonathan Hooper has delivered us with yet another stat pack to chew over. 

 

We didn’t dominate possession

That stats show we were quite comfortable letting Ebbsfleet have the ball, especially in the first half. A lot of our chances came from ‘Fleet trying to play out from the back and us then catching them on the break. Over the course of the 90 minutes the visitors had 59% possession but did very little with it. Their xG was 0.44 and the two they did score were gifts.  You can see on the momentum chart, Yeovil were in total control until around the hour mark, where that crazy spell saw Ebbsfleet take control and level it up. Fleet switched to wing backs, and really isolated Raphael Araoye, who lost 10 of his 15 ground duels and conceded possession six times.  Sonny Blu Lo-Everton came into the game at left wing back in the 70th minute, to protect his teammate and nullify that threat which did halt that momentum.

 

We did dominate in attack

You can’t criticise the Glovers for not going for it. Yeovil had 14 shots at goal with 8 on target and an xG of 3.49. Mark Cousins goal was peppered with shots from inside the 18-yard-box and you can see from the average positions that the attacking midfielders had a lot more influence on the game. It was a similar pattern for Aaron Jarvis as on the opening day though. His one shot at goal was brilliantly saved – and led to Michael Smith scoring – but he didn’t get a lot of the ball. A lot of Jarvis’s work has been what he’s done off the ball, rather than on it, so far. 

Brett McGavin Tuesdays

The centre midfielder enjoyed his night on Tuesday, bagging a wonderful goal from the edge of the box. McGavin had 46 touches of the ball, was accurate with 84% of 31 passes and made three key passes. What you get with McGavin is risk, however. He conceded possession 12 times against Braintree, 11 times against Ebbsfleet and 10 times against Hartlepool. Since the Hartlepool match, McGavin’s average position has been further forward than his partner, Matt Worthington, meaning he’s taking those risks in higher up the pitch rather than in his own half.

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Referee, Greg Rollason, Ref

Pictures courtesy of Gary Brown. Please ask for permission before using.

 

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Match-winner Morgan Williams spoke to BBC Somerset following the 1-0 win at Braintree Town and the defender said the opening win of the season would help Yeovil Town ‘kick on’.

Williams said: “[I’m] absolutely delighted, obviously, to get off the mark now with a win, it’s perfect really. Normally that’s in your head like every week thinking ‘when we’re going to get our first win’ and we’ve got it now so we can really kick on for players.”

When asked if getting that first win played on his mind, he said: “100%. I think every footballer would say that you want to always get off to a winning start [on the] first game of the season. We obviously didn’t do that and it’s kind of like ‘when are we gonna when are we gonna get that first win’ and absolutely delighted to get that first win now in our second game. And [my] first goal as well.”

The net nestles as Morgan Williams turns the ball home.

 

The Glovers improved after the half-time break and he told BBC Somerset reporter Josh Perkins that managed wanted his team to express themselves more.

“He just said we just needed more quality in the final third, just everywhere really.  We were a bit hesitant and a bit, maybe nervous with a few of our passes. The gaffer gives us so much freedom to kind of play, especially the front boys to have that freedom and play freely. So he just wanted us to really express ourselves because he knows that we’re a good team, good players and we’ve got players like Frank, Jarv, Youngy, players off the bench as well that come on are explosive and exciting to watch and he just wants us to really express that and go and win games.”

Job done, on to Ebbsfleet at Huish Park on Tuesday night!

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Yeovil got the first National League points on the board this afternoon at Braintree Town, thanks to a Morgan Williams goal in a 1-0 win. Mark Cooper spoke to BBC Somerset’s Josh Perkins following the game and praised his side’s second half performance.

“Didn’t enjoy the first half. It was a difficult afternoon for football, with the pitch and the weather. We had a few words at half time and just wanted a bit of enthusiasm. I wasn’t asking for anything too scientific, just wanted a bit of enthusiasm. I thought we started the second-half really well and did really well in the second-half,” he said.

Cooper was pleased with his sides battling display at the back against a very physical Braintree team, saying: “The back four, back five, you know, were heading every ball that came in the box. You know, you’ve got Akinde and Inih Effiong, two of the probably the biggest footballers I’ve ever seen, and they seem to have every player over 7 foot at the end and the ball was coming in the box. Wanns, Whitts, Raph came on and headed some balls away, Smudge all of them. All of them Jarvs, Frank we had to defend our box really well and we did that.”

Josh Sims made an exciting debut from the bench, showing his quality and Cooper praised both he and Raphael Araoye who made his debut. “He’s [Araoye] gonna be a big player for us, I think and for Bristol City as well. And I think with Josh Sims, you saw cameo there, real quality didn’t you when he came on? Brilliant from the Chairman to enable us to get a player of that quality and hopefully he can do well.”

Asked if he’s looking at doing anymore business Cooper said he is ‘always looking’ and added that he is expecting another tough match on Tuesday with the visit of Ebbsfleet to Huish Park: “Tough, tough game expected. At this level, every game is tough. You see that today, they’re a physical outfit and you know they do it really well and you have to deal with that physical side in every game you play at this level.”

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The opening day saw a 1-0 defeat for Mark Cooper’s Yeovil Town at the hands of Hartlepool and this season, thanks to promotion and SofaScore, there is a load of stats at supporters’ fingertips. 

Our good friend Jonathan Hooper is a bit of wizard and has produced this very tidy graphic.

 

xG – expected goals –  measures the probability that a particular goal-scoring opportunity will result in a goal based on various factors such as the location of the shot, the angle, the distance from the goal, the type of pass that led to the chance, and other situational variables.

xP – expected points

All stats according to SofaScore

But what does it mean?

Possession, possession, possession.

We know we want the ball and against Hartlepool we had 62% of the ball and attempted a whopping 500 passes – 406 of which were successful. Yeovil attempted more than twice the amount of passes of Darren Sarll’s side.

On the images on each side of the graphic you can see the average position of each players, each with a different size circle. The larger the circle, the more involvement. Yeovil’s biggest circles are in defence, with Williams and Wannell seeing more of the ball than any other players on both teams.

It means little if you don’t do anything with it…

For all of the posession, Yeovil’s xG (expected goals) was 0.73 compared to Hartlepool’s 1.22. That means, the quality of chances the visitors created was better than Yeovil’s. It wasn’t until well after Jack Hunter’s 65th minute goal, that Yeovil’s xG began to increase where they created a flurry of chances late on.  Harvey Greenslade’s miss in the 97th minute was only worth 0.45 xG and was the best quality chance at goal on the day.

Source: SofaScore

Despite seeing less of the ball, Hartlepool got twice as many shots away – albeit the same amount on target as Yeovil. Those big blue spikes on the momentum graphic from the 50th minute are the visual representation of “it’s been coming” as Hartlepool pushed on and opened the scoring.

Our forward players will need to step up

The size of the circles for Aaron Jarvis, Dylan Morgan and Frank Nouble show the influence they had on the pitch on the day. Jarvis put himself about and roughed up his opposing centre backs but didn’t receive much service, only getting 10 touches of the ball. Likewise, Morgan, substituted in the 57th minute, didn’t get a lot of the ball and only had 16 touches. 

You can see from the heatmap below that Frank Nouble found himself dropping deep and on the left side to get on the ball to try and make things happen but his impact further up the pitch and centrally wasn’t as great. He may have also found himself wanting to help out his teammate Morgan, who struggled to make an impact.

 

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Words by Seb White

On April 22, 1993, the day before The Glovers beat Boston United 2–1 at home (Mickey Spencer scored a brace. Of course he did) the release of the Mosaic Web Browser marked the genesis of today’s internet. Three decades on, we live in a time of information overload, the incessant pinging of social media notifications, and instant communication with friend or foe via a litany of apps. It’s sometimes easy to forget how things used to be, how different it all was. The mid to late nineties was a time of landlines, pagers and me and my mates getting our first mobile phones. Communication was doable but sporadic.

Finding out the latest news about your favourite football club was hard, and it was even harder if that favourite was in the 5th tier of the English football pyramid. If you were lucky, the latest signing or managerial change would be announced on Ceefax or Teletext. It seems ridiculous now, but you’d wait for a local newspaper to come every Thursday for a shred of commentary, opinion or analysis outside the basics. God bless the Western Gazette.

“I had no real idea who people with daft names like Badger, Taff Glover, Hoagy or HHH were, but I knew they really liked the same thing I did”

Then the internet came along—which we’d have to dial up to—and initially, it was just a lot of text on screen. But it was something. ytfc.com was the first website I’d go to, and not long after, it was also something brilliantly named called ciderspace.co.uk. The forums on both sites were the first time you could chat with people outside the actual match. It really was a whole new world, and I was in hook, line, and sinker. I had no real idea who people with daft names like Badger, Taff Glover, Hoagy or HHH were, but I knew they really liked the same thing I did and had given us all a platform for us to chat about that silly thing, and seemingly they sounded like they knew what they were talking about.

As the late nineties edged towards a new Millennium, awaydays would also involve joining the dots and making online real-life connections. Can I remember exactly the first time I met Badger? Or Hugh? Or Taff Glover? I won’t pretend and say I did, but I know, looking back at some point, the nods became greetings, they became chats and sooner or later, they were just the people you gravitated to on match day. It helped that they literally mapped out their pre-match schedule in brilliantly and accurately researched away day guides that would take you away from the beaten track. As an information resource, Ciderspace was more than enough for a fan of a 5th-tier football club: it also had a brilliant tone of voice, no cut and pasting of press releases, but proper analysis that got to the nub of the matter and communicated exactly what you need to know just like a fan on the terraces.

Off the pitch, Yeovil Town fans were spoilt rotten, really, thanks to a gang of hardy, funny volunteers who somehow, in between their day jobs, created and fed a community that grew and grew. Community, for me, is and will always be the most important thing about football. The goals, the highs and lows, and the awaydays all help to embellish the moments and experiences but are nothing without other people and a real bond.

“If it wasn’t for Ciderspace and the basis of knowledge, support, potential contributions, and customers, I’d probably not have started a football fanzine”

It may have just been an independent fan site, but If I’d not messaged someone called will_ran on the Ciderspace forum to see if he wanted to go halves on a room for a pre-season tour, I might not have ended up having a drink post a Yeovil game a few years later with his sister-in-law who ended up being my wife. If it wasn’t for Ciderspace and the basis of knowledge, support, potential contributions, and customers, I’d probably not have started a football fanzine; if I’d not done that, I wouldn’t have made that first step in a career in football media that has shaped my life. If it wasn’t for Ciderspace, I wouldn’t have set up the Capital Glovers and made friends for life. If it wasn’t for Ciderspace, the Capital Glovers wouldn’t have a WhatsApp group which, a few years back, expressed concern that Martin Badger Baker hadn’t been heard from on a match day. I lived closest, so I jumped in an Uber to go and check on him, but I was much too late and then had to ring and tell HHH that he was no longer with us.

And if it wasn’t for Ciderspace, there wouldn’t be the same WhatsApp group of Yeovil Town fans of different ages, different backgrounds, different stories suddenly pinging into life in the early hours of the morning because the daughter of one of the said group has to explain the cancer her dad didn’t want anyone to know about had taken the life of a wonderful man prematurely.

No more pre or post-match pints dissecting on and off-the-field shenanigans as we had done and hoped to do so for more years to come. No more relying on the Yeovil Town oracle to clarify or confirm a cloudy memory or hazy recollection of a green and white past. We’ve been through this process when Badger unexpectedly passed away. It will feel like something is missing on a match day, but life does indeed have to go on.

“One thing is for sure: Taff, Badger and Hugh more than did their bit and should be remembered as much as those on the pitch in the annals (physical or digital) of Yeovil Town history.”

It might feel a bit like the end of an era now the three founders of Ciderspace are no longer with us, but in Gloverscast, their spirit very much lives on. Enjoy it, contribute to it, support it and make the most of it.

Who knows how Yeovil fans will follow goings on via the Information Super Highway about their favourite football team in the years and decades to come, but one thing is for sure: Taff, Badger and Hugh more than did their bit and should be remembered as much as those on the pitch in the annals (physical or digital) of Yeovil Town history.

I missed the funeral as I was on holiday, and the lads tell me the ales were raised. Consider this my contribution to paying respects. So thank you, Hugh, for your contribution to my and many other people’s Yeovil Town fandom. As a teacher, father, and grandfather, you already leave a great legacy, but you made a bigger mark than most by also doing a daft website with your mates. Rest in peace, sir.