Yeovil Town were put to the sword by promotion-chasing Carlisle United in a match that left Billy Rowley frustrated with the scoreline.
Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Josh Perkins, the manager said: “[I’m] Really frustrated with the result of the game. I’ll have to dive deeper into this in the next 24 hours. But, my gut tells me that we had some really decent spells in the game. At the moment, I think this is natural for when you’re at the the other end of the table. You tend to tense up when you’re around the other team’s box and you’re not in flow state, and you’re not loose, and you’re not finding the right pass.
Rowley added: “I can think in the first half we got to the edge of their box, and we had a shot from 25 yards when you probably had two extra players on the outside, and you could probably work a better chance, but we’re just sort of snatching at efforts. And then the flip side, Carlisle are obviously at the the opposite end of the division. They’ve got some some really talented players that are obviously in good form and when they get in and around your box, they tend to look a bit more cutthroat with the final action and they were better in both boxes. But I thought from 18 [yard box] to 18 it was dead even, and I think we had some some decent spells.”
It took just five minutes for Carlisle to take the lead through Morgan Feeney and that annoyed Rowley: “The first goal comes really early, which is so, so annoying, so frustrating. And, it just comes from a poor clearance, and then a ball in the box, and then that’s it. And then the second goal is obviously a penalty, which is just really frustrating. If you’re getting carved open and you’re just miles off it, then you can kind of accept that. I do still feel in the first 25-30 minutes, I thought our organisation was okay, but I felt we could have got to the ball a little bit more, and we could have got in their faces a little bit more, which we changed at halftime, and I felt like we did that well in the second half.”
Ryan Galvin put the match to bed in the third minute of first half stoppage time, a goal which Rowley said made the mountain insurmoutable: “It was obviously a dagger to the heart when they go and score in the 45th minute, because you go in at two nil, and you think, you score in this game anywhere up to probably 80 minutes, and you got a chance, but you go in three-nil, and you’re looking for a miracle. The mountain was far too high for us at that point.”
The Glovers were without the suspended duo of Jake Wannell and Aaron Jarvis, although welcomed back Alex Whittle to the bench, but the manager felt they missed the influence of the experience.
“We’ve got a small squad at the moment. We’re just about filling benches every week. Whitts and Page, were on the bench today, but they haven’t really featured in weeks – Whitts in months – so we were bare bones to an extent on the bench. Naturally missing any players, Jake – Captain – and Jarvs – obviously a target man that can relieve pressure at times – are big misses,” Rowley said
“The message to the group has been, regardless, if you’re 31 years old or you’re 19 on loan, I think when you cross a white line on a football pitch you’ve got to man up, and you’ve got to stand up to be counted, and even small things like when you’re taking a thrown in, communicating with people. And it’s small, basic things which we have to improve on, and we have to find the one and two percents and if we do that, we’ll be fine.”
Yeovil held Carlisle, who admittedly took their foot off the gas, in the second half but did show improvements after the break and manager said he wanted his team to have more of the ball.
“We just spoke about getting the ball back more often. I felt like Macca [Luke McCormick] and Tav were sort of leading the press in the first half, and it’s difficult because they’re dealing with four players in how we were pressing today, but I felt like the intensity to get to the ball could have been better. So we adjusted that. We did it, and then we started to regain the ball more and when you regain the ball more, you have more of the ball yourself. I’m really annoyed to concede three goals because the score line looks bad. I don’t think it was. It was a dreadful performance by any means.”
Attention turns to Wednesday now with the visit of Sutton United – who beat Wealdstone 3-0 today – and the fixture is pivotal as the Glovers look to increase the five-point gap from the bottom four.
“We’re aware of the situation we’re in. We understand what we need to do. We need to stick together, we need to work hard, we need to train well. And there can be no blame. People need to take ownership, including myself. We know we’re approaching a big game on Wednesday, and every game is that, at the moment, we’re fighting for three points in every game, regardless of who we’re playing, and we’ve just got to reset and make sure we’re ready for Wednesday.”