Captain Josh Staunton has urged his Yeovil Town team-mates to use their increasing physical presence as the National League season gets underway.
With the arrivals of strikers Malachi Linton (5’9″) and Alex Fisher (6’3″) up front and 6’4″ defensive team-mate Ben Richards-Everton who arrived at Huish Park last week, the skipper wants to ensure the Glovers make the most of their increased threat.
Picture courtesy of Mike Kunz.
Speaking about Richards-Everton ahead of the opening game against Scunthorpe United on Saturday, Staunton said: “He’s a big lad, Ben. He’s a good talker, aggressive aerially and is what you’d expect from a centre half of his experience.
“He’s a good addition to the club which gives us a good, experienced option in an important area of the pitch.
“It gives us another option because this year we are a massive team, you look around the team and you think you we are going to be a big team.
“We have to utilise that and dominate teams aerially, especially at set pieces because we definitely did not do that enough last season.”
Last season, our defensive players managed just six goals throughout the entire season with Morgan Williams top scoring with two of them, and Staunton has targeted adding more goals to his game in the coming campaign.
His only strike came in the opener in a 2-0 win at big-spending Wrexham, the only defeat the Welsh side suffered on home soil last season.
Staunton said: “It’s important we take the responsibility (of scoring goals) as well and don’t just point the finger and say ‘they should be scoring, we’re doing this’ because we are a team.
“If someone else is chipping in with goals, it takes pressure off the strikers and they will play with more freedom and that is when good things come.
“That makes us a more dynamic and diverse teams which is harder to defend against when you have one 30-goal a season man and rely on that one person to put them in.”
With goals at a premium last season and the same issue rearing its head throughout pre-season, goals from other positions may be a necessity for Chris Hargreaves’ men.