Yeovil Town boss Mark Cooper has suggested he is ready to make changes after seeing his side go down 4-1 at Bromley on Saturday.
The Glovers conceded four goals for the first time since the end of the 2020-21 campaign as their defensive solidity abandoned them whilst their inability to convert chances continued spurning numerous glorious opportunities.
Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Sheridan Robins after the match, Cooper said his players had given him an opportunity to ring the changes as they travel to promotion-chasing Barnet on Tuesday night.
He said: “It has certainly given me a chance to make decisions. I have just said to the players (in the dressing room) that they keep giving me an opportunity to change things at half-time, and I didn’t today because we were creating chances.
“But if I was a player I wouldn’t want to keep giving the manager the chance to take people off at half time, that was a possibility again today, we have to starting shaking things up.”
The Glovers’ boss described his side’s start as “horrendous” as they went behind to a bizarre deflected goal awarded to Ravens’ Louis Dennisafter just nine minutes before gifting on-loan Millwall defender Besart Topalloj a second after 32 minutes.
But, their poor form in front of goal which leaves them comfortably the division’s lowest scorers with 21 goals in 25 matches continued with Jordan Maguire-Drew and Andrew Oluwabori both missing glorious opportunities before the break.
In the second half, Cooper threw on new signing Jordan Young and joint top-scorer Malachi Linton in a bid to get goals only to end up conceding a third to Dennis just after the hour.
He said: “The whole last ten days (in training) have been about being on the front foot and being really aggressive getting after the opposition and pressing high.
“We were 2-0 down before we know it through two horrendous goals, we have three clear one-on-ones in the first half to seriously change the game, we don’t take them.
“In the second half we gamble, I gamble to try and get back in it and we have chances, we concede the third goal as we leave ourselves a bit short at the back.
“We score (through Andrew Oluwabori) and then we have a brilliant chance, Jamie Reckord has a brilliant chance to make it 3-2 with 15 minutes to go, we don’t score, they go down the other end and score.
“The start was horrendous, that’s nothing like we worked on, so we have some big decisions to make in terms of which way we’re going to go forward.“
Of his second half substitutions, he added: “I was just trying to get forwards on the pitch to try and get us back in the game, one midfield player and the rest were forwards, we were 3-0 down, we’ve just to try and see if we can get a goal back, make it interesting, we did then we had a brilliant chance to make it 3-2 but we didn’t take it.
“I don’t like publicly criticising players but when you have opportunities like that, you have to score, that’s what you’re in the team for.“
The game was Maguire-Drew’s final of a one-month loan from League Two Grimsby Town and Cooper said that a permanent deal for the forward was “more or less done.” He added: “Hopefully we can announce that early in the week.“