Yeovil Town recorded back to back wins for the first time since Darren Sarll’s time in charge of the club on Tuesday night with a comeback win over Truro City at Huish Park.
The Glovers left it late after going 1-0 down in the second half, but goals from substitute striker Olly Thomas and a late header from defender Jake Wannell clawed the three points back from the jaws of defeat.
Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Sheridan Robins, manager Mark Cooper was pleased with the resilience of his side, but knew there was more to come, especially in the final third.
He said: “I think we have to have that in our locker, that we can – not sort of fire – I don’t think we were bad from the edge of our box to the last third, but it just never happened in the last third.
“What we can’t do is give a silly goal away, which makes it even harder, but we need to have that resilience and that spirit to be able to do things like that.”
As the home side went 1-0 down to a Rocky Neal goal just before the hour, the Huish Park faithful became restless, but Cooper was quick to call for unity and support as he backed his side to fight to the end.
He added: “I just think there’s an expectation that we are going to win 5-0 every week, and if we don’t score in the first ten minutes, the unrest starts. What I’m not going to do is get the ball from the back and boot it up to front, because I don’t think over the 46 games that gets you where we need to get, we are going to try and be controlled. The reason we scored two goals at the end was because we wore them out and they made mistakes. The first goal, they get tired and make a sloppy clearance, we play a through ball and Olly Thomas is in, the second goal they switch off at a set piece.”
Picture courtesy of Iain Morland.
“I’m going to try and dominate the football, so apologies for that, but I’m not going to just boot the ball forward.”
Cooper acknowledges that after a decade of heartbreak, Yeovil fans have found it tough at times but wants his side to earn the ‘trust’ of the supporters, and says there’s only one way to do that.
He said: “We got to half-time, the last 20 minutes of the first half, we were turning the screw, we were asking questions of them, stretching their back line and making the pitch big, but like I say, the goal changed the game for them, the fans became increasingly anxious. We have to win the fans trust back, because they don’t trust us at the minute as a club and we can only do that by winning five, six, seven games so that they can start to trust me, us, the players, everybody, that we are on the right path.”
“Once we get that trust, we will be even more dangerous and we will start scoring more goals.”
Bristol City loanee Thomas got the equaliser, his first competitive goal for the Glovers and the manager was full of praise for all of the substitutes that made an impression. Another Ashton Gate player Zac Bell replaced Morgan Williams at half-time with Jordan Young coming on for Jordan Maguire-Drew at the same time as Thomas replaced Jake Hyde on 68 minutes.
“He (Olly Thomas) is a young boy, he is raw, he’s rapid, he scored a goal like that at AFC Totton (in pre-season) and I’ve been speaking to the squad and the boys that are not starting need to come on and make that impact and give the boys that did start, something to think about. We have to have that competition and that’s what Olly, Youngy and Belly did.”
The final call was for the fans, another 3,300+ attendance at Huish Park, Cooper admitting that this side was still learning, still growing and that success breeds to success.
“I don’t think the group that we’ve got and the experience we’ve got lacks confidence… we’ve got that confidence, other people might not, but like I say, we have to earn that trust and we’re fully aware of that, but we’d like our fans to be with us, go with us all the time and I think that tonight shows that if they do stay with us, the scenes you had at the end can happen more often. That end (Thatchers Stand) was incredible tonight, and they need to be with us.
“We have to keep going, another home game on Saturday, another big crowd, expectancy will grow, but we’ve shown that we can go to the end, I think the most pleasing thing is we can play an awful lot better, the players just said there it’ll be alright once we start playing better, they know, they’re not daft, there’s new players, Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Mark Cooper was speaking exclusively to BBC Somerset, the interview may differ slightly to the official club’s YouTube interview
Positive, a win ( by the skin of our teeth again!!!! ) out thought, out fought and totally out played by a team of part timers for 80 minutes. Finally Mark Cooper woke up and changed it, why does he insists on 3 at the back, for Mark Cooper read CARP ( anagram) I agree with his comment that you ain’t going to win 5 nil every week but we should be better in all areas of the pitch, starting with the dugout