Press Conferences

Billy Rowley cut a frustrated figure following his side’s 3-0 defeat against Scunthorpe United at Huish Park.

The Yeovil boss told BBC Somerset once he took the emotion out of the game by Monday, he will probably notice some good spells of play (which there was!)

Rowley said: “I guess there’s two sides to this really. Like you look at the score, you’re fuming and really frustrated and annoyed, but when I probably watch the game back on Monday morning [and] take emotion out of it, there’s probably a lot of good bits to our play. So the performance wasn’t dreadful, but I just think when you concede three goals at home, it’s just not good. It’s just not good.”

Yeovil’s domination of the first half never turned into anything and Rowley bemoaned his sides wastefulness in attack.

He said: “​So, I feel like our build-up was good. We spoke a little bit at halftime about just slowing your heart rate down a little bit in the final third. I just thought we were so wasteful in the final third. We got there, we built the game well, we’d have a chance to cross it, it would end up in the goalie’s hands, or we’d try and slip someone down the side and then we’d over-hit it, or we’d hit the first defender.

“​And I’m there on the bench sort of fuming at the lads and they’re probably looking over thinking, “Cor, why’s he going so mad?” because when you play against good teams, then they’ll come out swinging second half and you’re going to rue those chances, which is just exactly what’s happened.”

Yeovil fell behind to a penalty, which the manager said was offside, and were never able to regain momentum. He said: “I never really felt like Scunthorpe were dominating the game, but they’ve scored a penalty. [I’ve] just looked in the office and it was maybe half a yard offside, but it is what it is. So you go 1-0 down and then because of our lack of teeth in the final third, probably the lads are thinking, “Well, how are we going to score?” And then they’re [Scunthorpe] a good team, they’ve got some top players, and then they score a second and it’s arguably game over. So look, some decent bits of the performance, some nice bits of control, but that means just absolutely nothing when you lose 3-0.”

​The struggle in front of goal continued and Rowley said they only solution was hard work: “Work hard, review, and keep trying. That’s all you can do. Anything we say about that now is just not going to be helpful. So it’s about letting the lads rest for 24 hours, 48 hours, make sure we’ve got a lot of detail and clarity of what we need to see more of, and then it’s down to them to show us they can do it. And that’s it.”

Yeovil have a rare week with no midweek match and the manager was happy to get more time on the training pitch, but said not to expect any drastic change: “I think with 12, 10 games to go, I’m not sure we’re going to see drastic change. And look, I’m not going to say that this was a terrible performance because it wasn’t, there was loads of good spells in the game. If JD’s [James Daly] chance goes in that just skims the bar, you’re 1-0 up at halftime and it’s like a flawless performance really. But I think when you don’t score when you’re on top and then you get sucker-punched, it’s deflating for everyone: supporters, me, everybody connected with the club.”

Billy Rowley apologised following Yeovil Town’s 2-1 defeat at Brackley. The Glovers conceded two poor goals in the National League Premier clash and the manager disappointed with the performance.

Speaking to BBC Somerset’s, Ian Randall, Rowley said: “I know I’m supposed to say this to the fans, but I genuinely mean it: I am very thankful for them coming to support us today. And I’m going to apologise for that performance. I know all the lads will be in there agreeing. Everything we planned for against Brackley kind of was true: the game plan, their threats, how we were going to potentially deal with them. And at no point in this interview am I ever going to pretend like it’s the players – it’s all of us, it’s me. I’ll own that defeat on the chin.”

Rowley referred to his first interview where he said he was going to be ‘learning every game’ and said he was going to ‘figure out’ those of his squad who want to be on the journey.

“I tell you what it does for me is it motivates me a lot. In the first interview I said at this club, I’m going to be learning every game. I’m a very observant person, and I will figure out the players that want to come on this journey and don’t. I’m really disappointed by that performance today in a number of ways.” 

The manager did give credit to the hosts, who he knew would provide a tough challenge.

“Brackley are good at home at what they do. They sit in a block, they frustrate you, and they’re very good at that. They deserved the win today. Obviously, scoring early helped them a lot,it means they can drop their line and sit on the edge of their box. Then it’s tricky to play over them because there’s no space in behind; they have tight lines and it’s hard to then feed the players in the front areas of the pitch.”

“Obviously, the two goals, if you watch them back, they’re errors from us, really. It’s a set-piece chance that we’ve not really defended in the correct zones, and it’s a bit of a mix-up with the first goal. It was very much a creation of our own downfall there. But I felt even from when they scored the first goal, probably 15 to 20 minutes after that, I felt really comfortable with how the game was looking.

“We were arriving in their final third so often, and it was just the final choice. We were just a bit loose. We didn’t cross it when we should have crossed it with any quality, we didn’t slip people in when we should have. And then the more you make bad decisions in games, the more psychologically it becomes a really tricky game because you start doubting yourself, you start doubting the plan, and then you tend to make even more bad decisions. And that’s kind of what we did today. I think we started to doubt ourselves and probably overthink a little bit.

“I think there’s two ways to approach that when you’re playing against a block: you can either slow the game out to draw people out and then inject the speed, or you can just move the ball side-to-side really quickly and hopefully they jump out. We kind of did neither of those, which is again—this is a bit of a process we’re going through. We just weren’t very good today. Some of our attacking play, some of our choices weren’t great, so it’s definitely something we’re going to review and improve on.”

Rowley added that getting performances right at home is going to crucial for the remaining matches this season.

“I think one thing that we’re going to try to do in these 19 games remaining in the league is to make sure we’re very good at home. If you get draws away from home, it’s not the end of the world. I think probably a draw today would have been fair, but we’ll wear that loss on the chin.”

New Yeovil boss Billy Rowley maintained his 100% record in the dugout as the Glovers picked up a brilliant 2-0 win at Hartlepool thanks to goals from Aaron Jarvis and Luke McCormick.

Rowley told BBC Somerset’s Mark Stillman how happy he was with the victory: “I’m really, really pleased for the lads. They’ve left it all out there today. It was, always going to be a tough game, especially with the pitch and the conditions. Hartlepool are excellent at what they do, [they] caused us some problems, but I felt for the most part, we were not comfortable, but we were defensively quite solid. We restricted them to probably some sort of half chances. But yeah, just a really pleasing afternoon for us.

“I think it’s always sweeter on these long journeys as well. You know, you never want to sit on a coach for five hours or down in the dumps and reviewing the performances and why you didn’t win or why you didn’t create so, first and foremost, I’m so, so happy for the fans. I thought brilliant today. They were almost louder than the Hartlepool [fans], although I thought they were excellent as well. It was a great game and atmosphere. So really happy for the fans to come here and get that win. And of course, the lads as well, I think long overdue a couple of wins.”

Aaron Jarvis opened the scoring for Yeovil in the 14th minute and Rowley was full of superlatives about the striker.

“He was excellent today. He was brilliant. He led the line. Well. We felt that we were going to try and build the game a little bit slower in the first half, and then always having the option of using Aaron in, like, throwing the ball up to him a little bit more directly. I thought he dealt with that excellently. I felt that we were getting a lot of joy from that, and then we decided to, I don’t know, maybe just get more bodies around him and make that a little bit too predictable at times. But yeah, the plan for Aaron to do that role for us today kind of worked for us.”

Hartlepool had only lost one match at home before today and the Glover haven’t won there since 2011 and Rowley waxed lyrical about the organisation of the team.

“It speaks a lot for the boys and their organisation. We worked a little bit on that yesterday. We reviewed that from a video this morning and  they took everything we asked to a T. There’s also times where you have to think on the spot, and you know, the loud crowd here, we can’t always get information on so I thought Jake, Morgs and Fergie organised the boys in front of them expertly. We really restricted them to just sort of putting in long crosses towards the end. And Jed came in and claimed a few of those brilliantly. And what a keeper he is – unbelievable.”

The manager made changes from last week’s win over Boston and when about how his players reacted to the changes, Rowley said: “It’s so hard as a manager to not get players on the pitch. Sometimes the state of the game and even the environment and conditions dictates that so really, really pleased with the boys, I thought, Whitts defended well when he came on, Max [Joliffe], he does what he does. He covers ground,  he put a few good balls in as well to spring some counters. Tav [was] brilliant when he came on, Jarvs pulled up with a calf injury a little bit and and the idea was to bring on Tav late in this game and use his subtle touches and skill to retain the ball for us and I thought he did that really well.”

On the scenes at the final whistle, Rowley was pragmatic, if not frustrated with what happened.

“The final whistle blew, and it erupted into a lot of joy for our players and a lot of despair for Hartlepool’s, which naturally caused a bit of friction between a few of them. I don’t think there was any malice in it. It’s just one of those things, but obviously really frustrated that Morgan got a straight red for that altercation. Look, I’m not going to let that overcast, the great day and the great win, but yeah, just a little frustrated that that happened at the end, but it is what is.”

Yeovil fell to another defeat against Southend, extending their winless run to seven matches, and Richard Dryden bemoaned his sides’ continued struggles in front of goal.

Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Jack Killah the Yeovil boss also said the visitors probably created more, but that he felt his side could have a couple of penalties: “You look at the chances, they probably created more than us, but we defended well. [Our] Keeper played well, back three played well. We kept them out, but at the other end we didn’t take our chances. We probably had better ones [chances] in the first half with a couple of blocked shots. You look at the clips, we could have had a couple of penalties – there’s a couple of basketball saves in the goal mouth but at the end of the day, we haven’t scored again and we’ve lost 1-0 at home.”

Yeovil improved on their last home outing against Wealdstone (not a difficult task) but failed to test the Southend keeper all afternoon. Dryden said they’ll keep working on creating chances, though.

“We’ve got to keep working hard. Keep giving them more chances, delivering the ball in the box, which we worked on a little bit and we’ll be working on it again before the next game. We’re not creating enough, everybody knows that, but were getting into positions to create but sometimes is the final ball or the runs and it’s killing us a little bit at the moment.”

“We’ve got to keep putting the ball in decent areas and expect the forwards to get in there, or the midfielders or the wingbacks and load the box. It’s the hardest thing in the world to do, put the ball in the back of the net, but we’ve got to start doing it.”

Southend broke the deadlock in 92nd minute through Slavi Spasov, and Dryden said it was a ‘tough one’: “You look back at it, we can stop it a bit, there’s always little chances to stop a goal, but it’s just a sickener.”