It was a night to forget as Yeovil Town huffed and puffed without ever blowing down the house of bottom-of-the-table Ebbsfleet United in Kent last night. Dave was among the 150 who made the journey and here are his thoughts from the away end.
An absolute stinker: There’s no sugar-coating this one. Against a team which bottom of the league and playing with ten men for half-an-hour, to get 0 shots on target in the second half is unforgivable. Ebbsfleet were playing for a point from the first minute, but we showed no attacking intent for large parts of that game. The fact we’ve finished a game and no-one is saying a word about the referee for once tells you that he was favourable to us and he absolutely was. Truth is, we have no-one to blame but ourselves.

The moments came when we went direct: I feel like I have written this half-a-dozen times this season. I’m the wrong Pleb for nuanced tactical analysis, tune in to Friday’s podcast for that, but the moments a threatened were when we ditched the patient passing. I get that you need to be in control to find the moments to go direct but it just did not happen often enough. In ‘The 3 Loanees’ (Ciaran McGuckin, Kofi Shaw and Sean McGurk) we should have the quality to unlock the leakiest defence in the division. Another cross, another block, and rinse/repeat. It screamed of the need to try something else.
What has happened to our defence?: Another defensive error has cost us. We didn’t say that much last season, did we? But I will bet everything I have that Ebbsfleet are playing in National League South next season, and we gifted them one. The goal was a difficult one to see from my vantage point in the away end, but it looked like Jake Wannell got done. There’s so much quality in our defensive players, but their mistakes are killing us right now. See above for how our attacking play is also killing us right now.

Sean McGurk, take a bow: Thank goodness for McGurk’s goal. Even from the distance of the away end, it looked an absolute beauty. The skill to spin away from the midfielder from a ball dropping from some distance was just mouth-watering, little nutmeg and then a superb strike in off the post. It was going to take something to threaten Brett McGavin (either the free-kick at Boston or the rocket at Woking) in the Goal of the Season contest, but that’s put the cat right among the pigeons.
We’re still mid-table: Yes, yes, I hear you shouting at me. Hear me out. We go to football to be entertained and (McGurk’s goal aside) nothing entertained me about Yeovil’s performance last night. But I could say that about so many Yeovil sides down the years. I’ve wasted days of my life, spent thousands of pounds and burned thousands more miles for the pleasure and that is something I accept as a lower league football fan. I come to matches hoping to be entertained, but never expecting it. The reality is that this style of play has us where we should be this season, in mid-table. That is a statistic you cannot argue, the concern for me is we have got there getting results against other mid/lower table sides and last night was a golden opportunity to get one. Ebbsfleet are battling against almost inevitable relegation and yet they showed character, we need to summon some of that and show the undoubted quality we have – the players, the manager, everyone. Okay, you can carry on shouting at me again now.

Ugh we needed those three points! Agree with the comments Dave! There seems to be a few pieces of the puzzle missing in MCs jigsaw. We’ve noted the need for a LB for a while and whilst it was good to see Whittle on the bench, it showed the lack of depth that Wannell (who incidentally coughed up possession and couldn’t get back in time to help prevent their goal) is the latest to play there and 100% should never be played at LB again! I’m sure there are many reasons why we’ve not invested more in certain areas of the squad but LB is a continuing problem, especially if Whittle gets another knock. This adds to the seemingly reactive nature of MC lately – it’s been quite do we, don’t we, should we, shouldn’t we…..oh, too late 0-1 or we let in an equaliser! It strikes me we need to take a few more risks to kill teams off when ahead. I’m all for possession at times we kept the ball moving but when your CB is stood with his hands on his hip waiting for someone to pass too, that seems wrong. I don’t particularly mind us having the ball for long periods but not at the expense of going nowhere (“Yeovil going side to side with no forward play” said the Ebbsfleet co-comms more than once).
2nd half was toothless I fear if we can’t put sides as poor as Ebbsfleet to the sword we are gonna come up short more often than not…….Cooper ball is tedious & last night was a massive example of that…….
Roll on Friday hopefully a big crowd can stir our forward players into action 👍