Darren Sarll; Scott Priestnall

Yeovil Town manager Darren Sarll has said the club will need to be careful with their recruitment as they prepare for a third season in the National League.

The Glovers’ boss said there were “ongoing discussions” with a number of players who are out of contract at the end of the current campaign, but said the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the loss of parachute payments would hit hard.

Speaking on Thursday ahead of the weekend’s match at Altrincham, he said: “We have lost huge amounts of money next year because our League parachute payments stop.
“I have to take my hat off to Scott (Priestnall) because he has taken over a club at the worst time ever with relegation from the League, then COVID and the loss of parachute payments, but he has always stood firm and tried to give me the best conditions to do my job.
“We learnt on recruitment by not recruiting early enough, which we went on record about earlier this year around Christmas when I was having a bad time.
“We have to spend very sensibly this year and recruitment has to be a lot better.”

He said he expected to have another busy summer with agents for players pitching him players and potentially having to react to losing players, adding the club had made “over six figures” from sales of winger Myles Hippolyte to Scunthorpe United last summer, and strikers Courtney Duffus and Alfie Lloyd to Bromley and QPR respectively.

Sarll said: “Those sales have kept us going, so are we going to have to do that again and have to react to losing players? I don’t know.
“We’re going to have a five-week period between now and the start of pre-season where we are going to have a more settled squad doing a full pre-season. That will be my aim because we have never had that.”