Yeovil Town manager Billy Rowley admitted there was still plenty of room for improvement from his side after they finished their pre-season campaign with a 2-1 defeat to League Two side Newport County on Saturday.
The Glovers took the lead through an early goal from Luke McCormick and look in control in the early stages before half-time, but the visitors came back in to it and striker Shaquille Gwengwe bundled home an equaliser from a free-kick after half-an-hour to level the game.
Then with five minutes of the second half on the clock, keeper Jos Barker failed to claim a cross in to the box and Lee Jenkins was able to tap home a second.
Speaking to the club’s social media after the game, Rowley said: “My initial assessment is just a little bit of frustration. I just reminded the lads inside we’ve been together now four weeks, we’ve had probably 15 training sessions, it’s not going to be a linear process. This journey is going to have ups and downs. I’ve just watched some of the highlights back with Sam (Curry, the analyst) in the office and there was still some really good bits. I just watched about six or seven chances we should have scored or could have scored from and their first goal was offside.
“We played against obviously a League Two team with a new manager (in Hayden Mullins) and I think all their players were showing they want to play for him. We’ve had some pre-season friendlies this this year that haven’t been maybe as as realistic as we would have liked, but this was like your typical National League game. I take positives from us creating some some decent chances and the frustrations was just some of our defensive stuff. I didn’t think we dealt with long channel balls as well as we we should, so we’ll look at that this week and our defending from set pieces was not ideal. That is something we’re going to have to spend some time with, we’ll obviously look in the mirror first and try and improve things.”
The opening goal came after just four minutes when good link-up play saw striker Slavi Spasov set up McCormick to fire home his fourth goal in pre-season. But Rowley admitted after the game that his side did not do enough to press home their advantage.
The manager said: “The mentality of footballers up and down the country is the same. You go 1-0 and up and think ‘let’s hold on to this’ instead of ‘let’s keep doing what we did to score.’ That’s something we need to iron out these next few weeks because when we do score an early goal, the last thing any of us wants to see is us then not being on the front foot and not trying to score more goals. We saw the same with world class players like the England team a few weeks ago, there’s bit of anxiety to hold on to a result. We are going to have to just be braver, play with more courage, and and try and put teams on the back foot even more, because, when you go one up, teams will then get a more aggressive and they’ll bring their line up higher, and we need to exploit that better.”
There was a debut for defender Ben Radcliffe, whose signing on loan from League Two Crawley Town until January was announced before the match. The 22-year-old played 66 minutes and Rowley said he had seen enough from the his 14th signing of the summer to make him believe he has a good player on his hands.
He said: “Sometimes you get you get a gut feeling on players when you first see them and I’ve got that feeling about him. I had the same with Declan Skura last year when he came in on loan. He’s a very assured defender, he’s brilliant with the ball, even though he’s only trained with us once, he’s organising the line, he’s squeezing the line, he’s communicating with players. We’ve watched loads of his stuff in the past couple of weeks and when we heard he’d be available we we jumped at it.”
There was an appearance from trialist defender Brad De Jesus, the former Fulham academy player who appeared in the 1-1 draw at Farnham Town on Tuesday night, and a number of changes in the second half saw most of those in contention for a starting place in the National League opener at Scunthorpe United next weekend get minutes.
The Iron drew 1-1 with Chesterfield in their final pre-season friendly of the campaign on Friday night in a match which was extended to 120 minutes with both sides agreeing to give players the opportunity to build further fitness. There were the normal two 45-minute halves followed by an additional 30 minutes.
Looking ahead of the trip to Lincolnshire next weekend, Rowley added: “I just said to the boys in the dressing room, we’ve only been together four weeks, we’re still learning, we’re still trying to improve day-to-day. We’re going to have so many ups and downs, but I think it’s important that we realise what we’re trying to achieve, how we want to get there, and um and I’m looking forward to working with the boys. I think they’re a great group of of lads, their characters are really good, and I’m seeing some decent bonds form and my hope in these next few weeks is I think you do need to go through stressful situations to build bonds on the pitch. You need to go through like really tough games, you need to have a few wins, and you need to have a little bit of adversity and we’re going to just have to stick together in these next few months, and keep building relationships and keep trying to improve.
“We’ve got a full training week, so we’ll get back in to training on Monday, do our recovery and then we’ll have a three or four-day build in to plan for Scunthorpe away. They finished in the play-offs last year, a few of our boys know their team well, so it’ll be a very tough test. We went up there last year and lost 1-0, but we’ll be looking to go and improve on that result and lay something down.“