Yeovil Town manager Mark Cooper said his side had “no excuses” for the second half horror show which saw them crumble to a 4-0 defeat at Rochdale today.

Having gone in at the break level, the Glovers committed three defensive errors which handed the home side a comfortable win and extended the run without a win to seven matches.

Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Josh Perkins after the match, Cooper said: “That is the first one for a long while where I can say we were nowhere near it. We had a spell for ten minutes in the first half where Sean McGurk had a great chance to put Kyrell (Wilson) in for one-v-one and then Ciaran McGuckin hits one which looks like it’s going in the top corner, and you think ‘okay’ and we go in nil-nil at half-time.

Every goal was horrendous defending. I just said to the players in the dressing room that the way I would describe us today was ‘powder puff’ and you cannot be powder puff, sometimes you can not play well and get a result. No excuses from us, we were miles off it. There was not enough leadership out there. We let the fans down massively, there was a great following and we let them down massively.

He added: “We told them ‘start well and stay on the front foot’ at half-time and then it is just people not doing their jobs at a set piece, Wanns get blocked in, Ollie comes and tries to punch it and misses it and it comes off Alex Whittle’s bum and goes in. The goals were all horrendous, they were all terrible.

Kairo Mitchell puts Rochdale 2-0 ahead from the penalty spot after 57 minutes

 

Yeovil lost midfielder Jacob Maddox, one of just three central midfield players in the squad following the departure of captain Matt Worthington on Friday,  to injury in the first half and handed a debut to Swansea City loanee Kyrell Wilson as they made three changes from the side which started the goalless draw at home to Gateshead.

They are now without a match next weekend due to their intended opponents Boston United’s involvement in the FA Trophy and do not play again until the trip to Dagenham & Redbridge on February 8th. Cooper said that the break in fixtures would give the squad a chance to “reset” and said there would be further incomings and outgoings from the club before the next match.

He said: “Now we have a bit of a break a chance to reset and there will be one or two players coming in this week and one or two going out, so hopefully that gives us a bit of added impetus.

We need to make sure we give our new players the chance to settle and we need to keep improving our squad. We have lost our captain (Matt Worthington), we were confident Jacob (Maddox) could step up and he has got a niggle now which will hopefully be cleared up (by the time we play next) but we still need more at the top of the pitch.


SUBSCRIBE TO THE DAILY GLOVE


Subscribe
Notify of

7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Andy Pandy
21 days ago

I wonder who the outgoing players will be. My guesses would be:
1) Harvey Greenslade. He doesn’t seem to be in Mark Cooper’s plans.
2) Frank Nouble. I think he has underperformed this season.
3) Josh Sims. A few good performances recently but have they been enough to keep him at HP?

Benji
21 days ago
Reply to  Andy Pandy

I do wonder why he brings in these players like Greenslade, Morgan, Thomas etc when he clearly has no plans of using them… the inevitable loan and then contract termination beckons

Andy Pandy
21 days ago
Reply to  Benji

Greenslade and Thomas were both early summer signings and I’ve always wondered if Mark Cooper at the time thought the budget was too small to bring in experienced players so early on opted for younger, cheaper players on free transfers, then when Martin Hellier increased the playing budget, those less experienced players became surplus to requirements.

Phil Allen
20 days ago
Reply to  Benji

Can’t disagree with that Benji. Sonny is another one who has bags of talent but for some reason doesn’t fit the plan or is sporadically used. Seems a bit of a waste of money but I guess it factors into budget, who.we can get in.

Benji
21 days ago

Interesting how he blames a lack of leadership, the day after letting club captain depart. He keeps seeming to want to move people on, but that inevitably leads to a lack of consistency and that was clearly evidenced today.

Phil Allen
20 days ago
Reply to  Benji

I think we do have “leaders” but the second half seemed to lack anything worthy (no pun intended) of strength, cleverness, and someone to grab the game by the scruff of the neck and say “we are not going down like this today”. On GC the question was asked “are we too nice?”, I’d suggest we just aren’t clever enough or too predictable, especially without Jarvis to hold the ball up.

Mick
21 days ago

Now is the time to sort it. Good players seem to get shunted out, loans, transfers or even just left out in the cold. Mr Cooper seems to blame everything but himself. Maybe, just maybe it’s time for Mr Cooper to go out “on loan”. Let’s think, yep got it, try Port Stanley Strollers ( that’s the Falkland islands) should be far enough from Huish Park that he can’t do any harm !!!