Yeovil Town’s unbeaten start to the new season came to an end as they gave up a two-goal lead to suffer a 3-2 defeat at Southend United yesterday. Glovers’ fan Ed Turnbull was in the away end at Root’s Hall and here are his conclusions.
For a while it was textbook. For 65 minutes, that was a textbook away performance. We had to weather a storm or two, but we defended doggedly. Whenever Southend breached the first line of defence, there was someone in green on the cover, or a Super Jos Barker™️ in yellow making a solid stop. We didn’t have loads of chances up the other end, but we were clinical when they arose.
That free-kick killed us. We wilted in the end though. As soon as Darren Oldaker’s expertly-dispatched free kick hit the net, it felt as though 5 and a half games of high-energy football caught up with us. The energy seaped out of our legs, and into Southend’s. You don’t take off the likes of Brett McGavin and Luke McCormick unless you have to, and without them we lacked that vital bit of experience and composure.
We didn’t look after business. Even before Rowley rang the changes, I felt we didn’t keep the ball as well as we’ve shown we can. That is just as much, if not more, down to Southend’s quality as it is a drop in our standards, but for me that is a difference between the strong play-off contenders we currently are, and a top 3 team. We did have good patterns of play at times, but there were too many times we lost the ball in our own half, and that ultimately made life difficult for us.
There’s a silver lining. A loss always hurts, but I don’t feel as gutted as I normally would after seeing us lose having been 2-0 up. Maybe that’s just because following Yeovil over the last decade has numbed me to the pain, but I think it’s also because Southend were very good, and we still managed to get ourselves into a commanding position. I know it counts for nothing if you let it slip, but the scoreline at 65 minutes was further proof that we can really achieve something this season.
Onwards and upwards. My (our?) ludicrous dreams of an unbeaten season are over, but if you’d offered me 11 points after 6 games including Scunthorpe Carlisle Barrow and Southend, I’d have snapped your hand off. I’ve seen more than enough from this team to be confident that we’ll soon be back on a winning streak, with a kinder-looking run of fixtures now presenting a perfect chance to make a very good start an unbelievable one.
