Yeovil Town boss Mark Cooper has said that his team needed to find a bit more energy to see the game out against Altrincham.
Speaking to BBC Radio Somerset’s Josh Perkins he said that the dressing room was disappointed in the result, but there wasn’t much in a stop-start game.
“Yeah, disappointing, there was not a lot in the game, we ran out of a bit of energy at the end, because we had to make so many subs early in the game, I think that cost us towards the end, we couldn’t put enough energy on the pitch towards the end, we’d made four subs pretty early.
We’ve got players that are not quite up to speed yet and I think that showed in the last ten minutes.”
The Glovers were forced into two first half changes with both Charlie Cooper and Alex Whittle forced off, Cooper with a flare up of tendonitis whilst Whittle was on the receiving end of a nasty challenge.
“I think, we make a sub, we put a young lad on, who doesn’t track his man in the box and he scores, 1-0 up, that’s poor, not quite up to the speed of the game.
I will say, the challenge on Alex Whittle is a really dangerous one, I could see from here, that the guy, doesn’t look at the ball, doesn’t one minute look at the ball and he leads with his – let’s give him the benefit of the doubt – leads with his arm, Alex Whittle looks like Harry Potter, he’s got an unbelievable scar on his forehead. I end up getting booked for asking the fourth official, ‘have you seen the cut on his forehead?’ and I get booked.
So our captain has to come off, which then disrupts our rhythm.”
“[Charlie Cooper] has been struggling with tendonitis, in his achilles, and his calf and he’s needed a rest for a while.
Kitey wasn’t quite ready for 90 minutes, he did well, but the last 20-minutes his legs had gone, so yeah, those two subs took off a lot of energy for us, second half we couldn’t quite get to the ball quickly enough.”
The game did see the return of Jake Wannell after injury, he was introduced at half time, but he was powerless to stop the hosts finding a late winner.
“[Jake Wannell] didn’t have lots to do, it was like, the pitch levels it up, it makes it difficult, you see the ball bouncing all over the place at times, the goal comes from the ball bouncing over Harry Kite’s leg and goes straight to their centre half who is not marked in the box.
In the first ten-minutes, we had three long throws where the ball bounced on their six yard box and nobody forced it in, so we have to be a little more ruthless there, after that, the ball bounced, and Frankie managed to finish one off.”