Cooper: More ammunition coming in next week

Yeovil Town manager Mark Cooper has said he expects to bring more “ammunition” in to bolster his shot-shy frontline with just seven days to go until the start of the new season.

The Glovers went down 1-0 at National League South side Weston-super-Mare in their final friendly of the pre-season campaign with little offered in front of goal from the visitors.

Cooper pointed to the delay in starting his recruitment whilst new owner Prabhu Srinivasan completed his takeover of the club at the end of May, but said that attacking players were among his top targets.

Speaking to the club’s social media, the manager said: “We always said we were going to be late in our recruitment, we were not able to start recruiting until the middle of June (following the takeover). We have recruited a few (in Tahvon Campbell, James Daly and Kyle Ferguson) and hopefully next week we will have some more ammunition coming in and some players at the top of the pitch which can really effect the goal.”

Yeovil started with forward players Aaron Jarvis, James Daly and Josh Sims supported by trialist Luke McCormick and throughout the match trialists Jevani Brown and Birmingham City youngster Ben Wodskou and frontmen Harvey Greenslade and Campbell were all brought on to find a spark. 

Cooper said: “It is just about ruthlessness. If we can get the players in to the opposition’s six-yard box as many as times as we did in the first half, the last little bit is about ice cold ruthlessness in front of goal. That is the bit (the players) have to that ownership of, they have to go and finish the edges, they are clear cut chances. If I had been stood here 3-0 up at half-time, nobody would have complained and the game is totally different, but it focuses our minds on the week ahead even more on where we have to tune. You can see where we need to tune, it is in front of goal.

“I said to the players after the game, when you find yourself in those positions, you have to be a killer. Whether it is By(ron Pendleton), Simsy (Sims), Luke McCormick (presumably pronounced ‘unnamed trialist’), Jarv (Jarvis), whoever it is, you have to kill. That is what you get paid for and, if we get that bit right, the rest of it is fine.”

Wodskou was a new face to the trialists who have featured in the pre-season campaign with both McCormick and Brown featuring in the majority of friendlies so far. The 18-year-old is a team-mate of full-back Pendleton in the Under-21s set-up at St Andrews and showed some flashes of his physicality during his appearance. Outside of youth football, he had a spell on loan at Northern League side Rushall Olympic last season.

Despite the defeat, Cooper insisted he was pleased with the first hour his side put in against a Weston side which included full-back Michael Smith and midfielders Sam Pearson and Will Dawes, who were all part of Yeovil’s National League South title-winning side of 2023-24.

The manager said: “The first 60 minutes were really good, we should have been two or three goals up at half-time, we missed some brilliant chances. In the first half we got in behind them numerous times, Byron (Pendleton), Simsy, Luke McCormick (Trialist A) should be scoring and we don’t and that is the name of the game, we have to be better in both boxes. Our general play was pretty good, it is just the last little bit.

“We changed the shape to put two up front to try and get some minutes in to people which took away our fluency and (the game) gets a bit stretched then, but, if you take the result out of it, we dominated the game and played some good stuff. The disappointing bit is that we give away a penalty and lose the game, but there were some good bits.“