Mark Cooper spoke to BBC Radio Somerset’s Josh Perkins following the Glovers 5-0 loss to Barnet on Tuesday night.
Josh Perkins: “Mark, it was never going to be easy was it?”
Mark Cooper: “You kind of know what’s coming with the squad as it is at the minute, when you look back at home, who is sat back at home and then we lose another one after so many minutes, Michael Smith – he said he was alright to play, we lose that, then we have to play a right winger, who has probably never played as a right back, at full back.
You can’t come to places like this, where they’ve got a team full of men, and be as depleted as we are. We have to put that one out the way, we’ve had a good little run, we have to put that one away now and we have to try and get two or three players in before Saturday.
We’re relying on the same three or four players every week to be a nine-out-of-ten and scrap and fight and tonight that was men against boys, some of ours need to look at that… men against boys.
JP: 3-0 down at the break, against a team top of the league, it’s always going to be difficult to gee your players up, but what were the words to the boys at half time?
MC: Let’s try and get a goal, let’s try and get an early goal, we changed the shape a little bit, but we’re scrambling, because we haven’t got a dominant centre-back, we didn’t have a right back and we’ve probably got half of our team sat at home watching Love Island or whatever they’re watching.
But, like I say, we can talk about it until the cows come home, it was men against boys tonight, but we kind of knew what was going to happen. [They’re] physical, big, they can play, they can be direct, and that’s a yard stick for us next year and learn about how we go about our recruitment, what kind of player we need to sign to try and compete at the top end of the league, all it’s done for me is make things more and more clear.
Dust that one down, great support, great turnout on a Tuesday night, coming to London, backing the team, thank you to them, we’re going to strive again, non stop to try and get some players in.
JP: When you say ‘It makes your job more clear’ what exactly do you mean by that?
MC: What do you think I mean? In terms of recruitment, it makes it clear in terms of what type of player we need to sign.
JP: In terms of signings, and getting players back ahead of Saturday, Michael Smith went off, I don’t imagine you’ll have him back, a word on Jake Wannell potentially and Ciaran McGuckin.
MC: We wont have any of those players, the only one who might have an outside chance is Ciaran McGuckin, if he maybe drinks a little bit of Holy Water he might have half a chance.
Listen, the boys in the last three games have had a right tear up, some of them have run themselves into the ground, to show what it means for them to play for the club and we need three or four more like that to add to the squad and that it the key to try and attract those kind of players to Yeovil.