Cooper bemoans impossible loss

Mark Cooper cut a very frustrated figure following the Glovers 1-0 defeat at Braintree on Saturday. Yeovil fell to a 1-0 defeat, but had their chances to put away and the Yeovil boss put the pressure on his forwards to find the back of the net.

Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Josh Perkins, Cooper said: “It’s a game we should never, ever lose. We’ve got 15 really big chances, we don’t convert one. And they [Braintree] have a couple of chances in the first half, but it’s virtually impossible to lose that game with the amount of chances we had. I mean the first half. I mean we’re clean through on the goal, we’ve hit the goalie in the face, where we just need to to roll it in the goal, put one past the post, on the six yard line, and we’ve hit the cross bar, when it’s a roll into an empty net, and then the second half we’ve just missed multiple chances. We have to score.

“The pleasing thing is, we’ve created loads of chances. Had large spells of the game. Do we want to open up to create loads of chances? Then we leave a little bit open at the back, so it becomes end to end. But with that many chances, we have to score. Simple as that is, can’t dress it up any way. You have to score whether you’re a forward, midfield player, yeah, you’ve got score.”

When asked what it’s down to, and if Yeovil needed lady luck on their side, Cooper demanded ruthlessness in front of goal. 

“It’s not luck. You have to be ruthless.  When you get that chance, just put it in the back of the net. Take the back of the net out. We give the keeper a chance. We hit him in the face with a ball when the whole goal is gaping. You know we we have three chances at the end where our forwards kick each other and miss the ball, and it’s on the goal line. It’s it’s frustrating because the performance is good in terms of our attacking play. And the pleasing thing is, we create lots of chances, but we’ve got to be ruthless.”

Perkins offered a bit of praise for the performance of Tahvon Campbell, but Cooper shot back: “[It] Doesn’t matter about forwards being good. No one’s going to look in the paper tomorrow and go, ‘ooh he was good’. They can look and say ‘they didn’t score’. So I’m putting the pressure on the forwards, all of them. We’ve got enough of them. You have to score. It’s not like we’re asking you to play a style of football where you’re not getting [chances], you’re getting you’re getting loads of chances. We’re playing really attacking. Try to change a little bit. If we create that many chances in the game, we should score at least three goals, which should be enough to win a game of football. 

Ahead of the visit of Gateshead on Bank Holiday Monday, Cooper said he hoped to welcome back Whittle and Cooper and that his selection headache was having “to pick the right forwards that are going to score.”