Manager Billy Rowley described his side’s second half performance in their FA Trophy quarter-final exit to lower league Southport as “unbelievably poor.”
The Glovers started the second half with a 1-0 advantage after James Daly’s strike three minutes before the break, but spurned opportunities to add to their advantage.
A late strike from the hosts’ Ted Lavelle following intense pressure from the National League North side sent the game to a penalty shoot-out which Yeovil lost 4-2 with striker Aaron Jarvis and captain Jake Wannell missing from the spot.
Speaking after the match in Merseyside, Rowley said: “Credit to Southport. The crowd played a part today, I thought the pitch was difficult to play on, but it’s no excuse for how bad we were in the second half. We were unbelievably poor.
“The idea when you’re 1-0 up is to make runs at the right time in behind, play in behind with a bit of quality, when they go long, try and smooth out the second balls and show some ability in tight spaces.
“We did nothing, we were just waiting to die, sinking deeper and then when we got the ball back, we’d turn it over in two passes. We got what we deserved and sadly Jed (Ward) couldn’t save the day in another penalty shootout. In the first half we were the better team, second half they were miles, miles better.”
The Glovers’ boss brought on Jarvis, who had made the journey separately having suffered with food poisoning, at the start of the second half and introduced forward Harvey Greenslade, loan midfielder Troy Perrett and defender Dan Ellison, recalled from Weston-super-Mare to boost the squad missing several cup-tied players who featured in Wednesday’s 3-2 league win over Sutton United.
Rowley said: “Some of the boys are tired, they’ve had to go for another 90 minutes and I felt like the subs today didn’t necessarily help us. It’s basic principles oof putting pressure on the ball is like understanding that there’s support around you and you can’t go, so stay in your slot. We looked really bad in the second half, really bad. We can come up with excuses of the pitch and we’re tired, but bottom line is we did not show enough quality, not enough to get on the ball. We got what we deserved.”
With the dream of a Wembley final now extinguished, the Glovers have just the National League Premier Division to focus on and a 3-2 win for Braintree Town, the team occupying the top of the division’s relegation places, at fellow strugglers Truro City means the gap to the dotted line has shrunk to five points.
Yeovil do have games in hand over all the teams below them, except Gateshead who have also played 33 times, and host Tamworth at Huish Park on Tuesday night looking for league points to extend that gap.
Rowley said: “In these times you look across the team and it’s never really one or two people’s fault in a in a loss, it’s usually multiple people, including myself. The worst thing we can do in this moment is like point fingers we need to stick together, we need to recover and we need to go and play Tuesday and and run our socks off.“