Cooper: We were soft in our box

Mark Cooper described his side as ‘soft’ in their box following the 2-1 defeat at Maidstone.

Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Ian Randall, Cooper said the errors at the back have ‘been creeping in’ and that he’d had a ‘nibble’ after Slough.

He said: “We didn’t compete in our box. We were really soft in our box. We’ve been defensively really good. But today, our back line, goalkeeper, defenders, we didn’t compete in our box. We didn’t head the ball, we weren’t authoritative and we let them dominate our penalty area. That was the difference between the two teams.”

“It’s been creeping in. I had a nibble on Tuesday night about it. We conceded a soft goal on Tuesday night for not defending our box. Two centre halves jumped into each other. And today was a culmination of the last couple of games, we’ve been a little bit soft In our penalty area. That might be a knock on effect from the players we are missing but the boys that were out there, we had enough.”

Cooper praised Maidstone and said they ‘probably deserved to win.’ “Full credit to Maidstone. They were physically better than us today. We can blame it on the coach breaking down. We can blame our injuries, but Maidstone, physically, today were better than us for a 20 minute spell. The second-half, you know, we have to go for it. We get back into it, could draw at the end, but they probably deserved to win.”

Yeovil were without Rhys Murphy, Jake Hyde, Michael Smith and Charlie Cooper, but still felt his side should have had enough to be competitive.

“We didn’t really stick to our identity. We’re missing key players, which I can blame, and I think you can see when you take those players out of our team we’re totally, totally different. But we still should have enough to be able to be competitive – certainly physically. It doesn’t matter about ability, if you’ve got a man in the penalty area and he gets in front of you and scores the goal, that’s just a desire and a will to do your job.”

Dylan Morgan came off the bench to score his first goal in green and white and boss thinks Morgan will be a big asset for the Glovers. “[It was a] really great finish, very difficult. It’s the edge of the boxm rolled back and he has to put it in the corner and if you had a bit more of that calmness, the chances we had in the first half and late on and we would have got something. Dylan’s got great ability and he’s getting used to how we work and we’re getting him up to speed fitness wise. He’ll be a big asset for us in the future.”

It’s only the fourth game Yeovil have lost this season in the National League South and the first since Welling on the 25th of November, but Cooper stuck the the mantra that he’s done all season and isn’t looking at the now ten point lead.

“We’re not as arrogant or as flash to think anything like that, we don’t really look at the lead. We just, and as boring as it is as a cliché, we just look at the next game and three points and today we lost an opportunity to get some points on the board.

“We’ve established up that [the lead] position by being a really good football team and dominating the possession of the ball. And the two or three actions in each half that the ball comes in our box, we’ve defended today. I think they had three entries in our box in the first half and they scored twice.”