Yeovil Town manager Billy Rowley has said he is not sleeping at night because he is looking to strengthen the Glovers’ squad following a couple of departures this week.
The Glovers allowed striker Tahvon Campbell to join Brackley Town on loan until the end of the season earlier this week and had the exit of defender Declan Skura forced upon them when his parent club, Wycombe Wanderers, recalled him early from a loan spell.
Speaking to BBC Somerset’s Rich Hoskins on Thursday, Rowley reiterated his insistence that he would only bring permanent signings in if he felt they had long-term futures at Huish Park, but did say the exit of Skura freed up a loan spot for a potential new addition.
He said: “I can assure our supporters that I don’t really sleep at night because all we do is look into making the team better, making the squad better and trying to find the right solutions. We are working around the clock to make the squad bigger and thicker and bring in more quality.
“But I’ve said this many times since I’ve been in this job, the worst thing that we can do as a club is panic and bring in players that we don’t want to see here in six months’ or 12 months’ time. So that balancing act at this stage of the season is tricky, it’s something that we want to get right and that’s what we’re working on at the moment.
“If you bring in a permanent player now, you have to put them on a contract for minimum of 18 months, so it needs to be a player that you really want to see here next season. The other option is obviously loans, which we’ve dipped into this season I think pretty well. We just had Declan Skura recalled to Wycombe, which sort of came out the blue really. They had a couple of injuries to their first-team centre-backs, so he’s having to go back there, which does free up a loan spot for us. So that now adds a different solution for us that we could potentially find. I can assure our supporters we are working very, very hard and I can imagine that we’ll have a couple of bodies in within the next ten days or so.“
Asked whether Saturday’s trip to Boston United would be too soon to see fresh faces, he added: “Maybe, maybe not.”
The departure of Campbell, who scored and played the full 90 minutues on his debut in a 2-1 defeat for Brackley at Eastleigh on Tuesday night, leaves Yeovil with just Aaron Jarvis and Harvey Greenslade as recognised strikers going in to the weekend. The pair have got two goals each this season with Jarvis last goal coming on 6th December and Greenslade’s on 30th August.
Rowley revealed that Greenslade had received the all clear on a scan of an injury which had been troubling him in recent weeks and midfielder Ryan Jones was “feeling a lot better” following treatment on a toe injury. The pair will both be fit for selection at Boston.
Boston saw an unbeaten run of eight National League Premier Division games come to an end with a narrow defeat at league leaders Rochdale last weekend, but the Glovers’ boss is expecting a tough game against a side he beat in his first match in charge in November.
Since that day, the Lincolnshire outfit have sacked boss Graham Coughlan and replaced him with the experienced Paul Hurst and enjoyed the fabled ‘new manager bounce’ up until last weekend.
Rowley said: “It will be a tough one. Boston was the first game for Darren (Simpson, assistant manager) and I and we managed to get the win 2-1 on the day, but I was really impressed by them. They’ve got a lot of legs, a lot of energy, some players in the front part of the pitch that can hurt you. Tom Cursons has recently gone in there and he’s scoring goals at will, so it’s going to be another very difficult game and we’re going to have to impose ourselves and bring what we need to bring to the table.“
Asked how he felt the club had changed since the last meeting with the Pilgrims, the boss added: “I feel it is different. We’ve probably not been on the training pitch as much as we would have liked in the last six or seven weeks, and I feel like we do some good work on the training pitch. It’s not been ideal to just keep playing and the boys have been fatigued, but this week has been a good week for us. It’s been nice to have no midweek game and I think we’ve got some good training in. The boys have got some decent rest, so we should be going into this game refreshed and with a bit more clarity of how we’re going to score.
“We played Telford in the FA Trophy at the end of January and leading up to that game was the last week that we’ve had a Tuesday-Thursday session. Since then, it’s been Wednesday games, Tuesday games, another Wednesday game, so you never do anything other than recover and then play. It’s been a good week for us and it means that we can go into the game with a little bit more sort of ideas and clarity, but obviously on Sunday we’ll see if it’s paid off.“
Yeovil go in to the weekend two places and eight points clear of Morecambe, the side which occupy the top spot in the division’s relegation places and visit Huish Park on 21st March, albeit with games in hand over all the sides below them. Following the trip to Boston, they visit Woking next Tuesday night for a rearranged fixture against a side under the caretaker stewardship of ex-Glovers’ players Dale Gorman and Jake Hyde.
Asked if Rowley felt his side were safe from the drop yet, he said: “No, mathematically no. If you look into like points per game and all that stuff, you’d like to say that we’re in a half-decent position. But, obviously it means nothing, games in hand when you’re at the (wrong) end of the table doesn’t really mean a lot. You want points on the board.
“We’re just going to approach every game as it comes, it’s just three points on the line for Saturday. We have got some tough away games coming up, but then we’ve got a spell where we’re at home against teams that are around us. We’re feeling confident going into that period and we’ve just got to approach Saturday like it’s a very important game, which we will, and hopefully get some points on the board.“