Picture courtesy of Mike Kunz.
Yeovil Town Manager, Darren Sarll made a guest appearance on the ‘Early Doors Football Podcast’ this week and spoke about the current sesaon and his career to date.
He and the hosts chatted through his playing and managerial career before the Glovers’ boss was asked what it was like trying to pit wits against some of the league’s biggest spenders and how he and his coaching team were leaving no stone unturned in their quest for success.
“When we hear the rumours of wages, we’re all quite envious, when you look at someone like (Wrexham manager) Phil Parkinson, he deserves all he gets because he’s had a wonderful career…
“I liken the National League to League One, in League One you’ve got Sunderland and Accrington, so the disparity between the very top spenders and the very bottom spenders – i’m not sure if Accrington are the lowest spenders – that type of model, that means that the gap is huge.
The gap is massive in the National League, we all know Wrexham, Stockport are a club of affluance, but because of COVID, how badly we were hit by COVID, we’re now in the bottom third of that division in terms of financial resource.”
That will probably not come as any surprise to Glovers fans, the signing of many loan players and younger talents has made that clear, something which Sarll says was partly down to circumstance, but also a concious decision.
“It’s a brilliant division, anyone who thinks the National League is an amateur division is very much mistaken, it’s a professional division, we’ve spoken about Phil Parkinson, Simon Rusk went in at Stockport from Brighton, my job before Yeovil was in the Premier League with Watford, we’re looking at a certain calibre now in that division.”
“I haven’t had an easy game in two-and-a-half years… what we’ve done this year through choice and a little bit of financial circumstance, we’ve gone very, very young. We’ve got the 2nd youngest squad in the division for a couple of reasons.
This is my 21st season coaching professionally, 15 years of that has been in development. We’ve gone down that route to try and develop”
“We’re going on sheer potential, ambition and desire… we’ve tried to go down that way, I would say my ambition, enthusiasm and thirst to help young people is going to try and help bridge that gap, we rely on the energy, the bravery of the young – and sometimes they’re foolish and naive”
Sarll went on to make the point that it’s not always the biggest clubs that are going up, and that you need a lot to go your way to get promoted but he and Assistant Terry Skiverton have had to beg, steal and borrow their way to getting the best young talents either on loan or on a permanant deal.
“We’ve got a young man called Charlie Wakefield, he played in the Champions League Under 19s final for Chelsea. He now needs a platform, he has to play week in week out and get a senior CV under his belt”
“We heavily reply on my contacts over this many years, we’ve got loans from Middlesbrough, loans from Cambridge, loans from Exeter, players on loan from Luton. Because Yeovil is such a remote spot geographically, you have to call upon every contact possible to get every player possible.”
“If I was a young player, Yeovil is a real good springboard to start to your career, my Assistant Terry Skiverton had Andros Townsend, Luke Ayling, Steven Caulker, Ryan Mason who ended up being really top end players”
You can listen to rest of the podcast by clicking HERE.... oh and if you want a podcast to come on, Gaffer, you should have said!!