Yeovil Town boss Mark Cooper is focusing on the strengths his side showed in last weekend’s 3-0 victory at Solihull Moors ahead of the visit from AFC Fylde this weekend.
The Lancashire outfit picked up an impressive win of their own last weekend with a 3-0 home win over promotion-chasing Forest Green Rovers, but sit third from bottom of the table and looking to build on that result in Somerset.
Speaking to BBC Somerset reporter Jack Killah ahead of the game, the manager said he was not too surprised at the result and had been focusing on building on his side’s own morale-boosting win during training this week.
He said: “At this stage of the season you get so many strange results. York went to Braintree and lost, we could easily have beaten York the week before, we try not to look at other results, we just get our heads down and do what we need to do. It is a great result for Fylde, they played really well, they were aggressive, pressed and looked really organised and sometimes you catch teams like Forest Green on an off day. But we are at home and if we play anything like we did at Solihull we have a big chance, if we run like we did against Solihull and get after the opposition, we can get a result.
“There is another argument to say that if they were coming here and they were safe they could come here and go and play their stuff. It is about fully respecting the opposition, they have some good players, but they are in the relegation zone for a reason. We have to fully respect them and the fact they had a good result last week, we will be organised and on the front foot and look at how we can hurt them with our weapons and I am sure we will give them some problems.”
Cooper said new midfielder Harry Kite, who has joined on a short-term deal until the end of the season, was the only addition he is expecting to the squad which faced Solihull.
The former Exeter City player has been without a club since turning down a new contract with the League One club at the end of last season. He suffered a hamstring injury which required surgery in the summer and then a calf injury during his recovery, but has been training at Huish Park in recent weeks. You can read what the 24-year-old said to the club’s official channels – here.
On the new arrival, the manager said: “He is another player that understands his role, he has played 50 games in League One I think. If Harry Kite had not picked up the injury he has, him coming to Yeovil would never be in the mix because he would be going to a top end League One club. He got really unlucky in the summer because he turned down a new contract with Exeter to try and expand him football knowledge and career and he missed out on a deal and got a bad hamstring injury. He came to watch one of our games with a view to signing, then he injured his calf, and now he is back fit and has been training with us for the past two or three weeks when we have been able to assess him and he is in a position when he needs some minutes and he is going to stay with us until the end of the season. I really hope that he shows what he showed at Exeter, he’s tenacious, he can run, he understands the game. If he shows what he showed at Exeter, we have another terrific midfield player on our hands.”
Asked whether he hoped that, if things went well with the player’s fitness, it could lead to a longer stay at the club, the manager added: “It is one of those, if he comes and does well, I am sure there will be bigger clubs interested, but I am sure we have given him the chance and shown him a bit of loyalty to get him back going, so that might weigh heavily in our favour. Having watched him for the last couple of weeks, he really understands the game and he is really mobile and aggressive.”
Ahead of the victory at Solihull last weekend, the manager spoke about their being “light at the end of the tunnel“ on some long-term injury victims including defenders Michael Smith and Jake Wannell. Midfielder Brett McGavin has been ruled out until the end of the season with an injury sustained in the 1-0 defeat to York City during the last outing at Huish Park.
One player who impressed last weekend was winger Otis Khan, signed on loan from Oldham Athletic ahead of the fixture, but Cooper was not surprised at the impact the Pakistan international made.
He said: “Otis understands the game tactically, he understands what he needs to do and where he needs to be, that comes through experience. Sometimes with younger players they just see the ball and run and have different assets, whereas Otis understands how to press, where to be when he hasn’t got the ball and he has got quality as well. The more of those players you have in your team, the better, and we were really lucky to get Otis for the money. We would have liked to have more players like that, but getting the availability is much harder.”
Following the win at Solihull, Cooper described the 244 travelling fans as “proper fans”, adding: “They travel three hours, and they cheer the team on from start to finish. No negativity. And it’s really good. Maybe it’s a coincidence, when the fans get behind you, you can win a game.”
Asked whether he thought that the atmosphere away from home helped his side, he said: “There have been lots of things said this week about comments that have been made and I think it is important that if you support your team, you support them through thick and thin. For the 90 minutes, you get behind them, they are going to make mistakes because it is National League football. Teams that have fan bases that consistently get behind their team in good and bad are the ones that invariably have good results. The easiest thing in the world to do is to berate your team when you are struggling and they make a mistake. The hardest thing to do is get behind them and if you see people nailing players, I think you have a duty as a fan to say that is out of order and we need to back our team. If the team has played rubbish at the end of the game, you have every right to (criticise them) but during the team get behind the players, that is what being a supporter of a team means to me. The away fans last week were fantastic and at home the majority are really good fans, but there seems to be a minority that whatever you do they are really negative and that does not help anyone.“