Yeovil Town manager Billy Rowley said his players were “not ready for the battle” as they were outplayed by an Aldershot Town side which started the match below them in the table at Huish Park on Tuesday night.
The Glovers fell behind to a goal from full-back Olly Scott after just seven minutes before pulling level through a stunning strike from on loan attacker Terrell Works with their only real effort on goal all game after 26 minutes, before Sean Patton won it for the visitors in the second half.
The 2-1 defeat pushes Yeovil down to 18th in the National League Premier Division table with a long trip to promotion-chasing Carlisle United coming up at the weekend.
Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Ian Randall after the game, Rowley said: “They were dangerous, but when you let them be dangerous, they’re even more so. My criticism of our players tonight is we weren’t ready for the battle. We knew it was going to be tough from a physical and mental side, and we didn’t match it. I thought we were quite weak in duels. I felt like we lacked a little bit of leadership on the pitch all round. You are playing in front of a brilliant support on a lovely night for football, and you’re just happy to lose your duels. I can’t stand that, I can’t stand it. Credit to Aldershot, they were miles better than us tonight, they were technically better and the game was just gritty and it was roll-your-sleeves-up time, and we didn’t do it.
“Even after Terrell scored, I thought we took our foot off the gas again and let them get their rhythm. They are quite a fluid, expansive team that are quite open with how they roam around the pitch. Like I said, it was roll your sleeves up, deal with your man, fight for the badge, and we didn’t do it. We didn’t do it today. We got beat up.“
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Aldershot, who leap-frogged the Glovers in to 14th place in the table with the three points, set the tone early with player-coach James Henry firing wide in the opening seconds of the game and never stopped pressing their hosts. It was therefore little surprise to any of the more than 3,000 supporters inside Huish Park when they took the lead through Scott’s strike.
Rowley said: “I’m a huge believer in the importance of the first five minutes of a game, it sets your tone, it sets your tempo. You need to understand how aggressive the opposition are pressing you or if they’re not. We had no feel for the game, even in the first ten minutes.
“I’m really mindful of saying these things because the referees have a tough job and they’re, you know, refereeing a game in front of 3,000 people and it’s fast and it’s hard to get everything right, but in the first two minutes, we had a blatant push in Dak(ari Mafico)’s back which resulted in five, six minutes of chaos with two or three of their corners, and that could have been just cleared up with a blatant foul on our player.
“But I look at the clock, ten minutes have gone, we haven’t been in their half and I think that goes down to a feel of the game. I said about leadership on the pitch all throughout the side, understanding that we haven’t been in their half and we’re on the tilt and we need to get up and we need to be more solid. We just didn’t do any of that stuff, we didn’t do basics at all.“
Next up Yeovil face an almost 700-mile round trip to face a Carlisle United sat third in the division and without a midweek match with Rowley calling on his players to learn from a reality check performance.
He said: “I just went in the changing room and I heard a couple of the boys saying the same things that I’m saying. They know it’s one of those games. I thought our support was excellent today and it’s just a shame that we didn’t use that energy on the pitch. It felt like we were the away team. The boys are equally as frustrated as me, but we’ve all got to learn from this and we’ve got to be better.“