![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/IMG_0169-scaled.jpeg\")
How it was not 2-0 at half-time I will never know!<\/p>\nYeovil Town\u2019s FA Cup dream came to a premature end at the first hurdle for the second successive season yesterday. The Glovers were beaten by a Hemel Hempstead Town side which played for more than an hour with ten men. Dave was among the travelling contingent and here are his conclusions.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Out fought. Out thought. Out. We were simply second best in every department and I have to say right off the bat that Hemel deserved their win. From the opening whistle, they simply wanted it more and we never seemed to have a plan to counter them. You can put a misplaced pass or a scuffed shot down to the surface, but time and again we were pulled apart and gave them time and space to run. At the risk of sounding like the old man (I know, I am), but I miss us the Cup giving our players the hunger and desire I saw from Hemel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How it was not 2-0 at half-time I will never know!<\/p>\n
Are we sure they had ten men? An extension on Conclusion #1, but two occasions in the second half I had to count Hemel\u2019s players to be sure. Aside from a few moments around the time we scored, they never looked like they were a man down. You can see why they are in the form they are in the National League South. Defensively they were outstanding and we simply could not find a way through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Where did our desire to attack go? If I had not seen highlights of the games at Aldershot and Sutton, I would have believed they were AI inventions. In the first half, it was only when Andrew Oluwabori got on the ball that we ever had any purpose going forward and in the second only when Byron Pendleton came on did we look to get balls in from wide positions. There is quality going forward in this team, but we simply did not show it.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/IMG_0166.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
What are we doing here? Hearing Richard Dryden say we had tried and failed to attract players to strengthen the squad is a major red flag. But should we be surprised? We\u2019ve heard about \u2018The 3 Cs\u2019 from our owners -calmness, competitiveness, community, in case you forgot. But it\u2019s not easy to stay calm with no obvious plan about how we\u2019re going to be competitive. A manager who feels stop gap no matter how much we\u2019re told he\u2019s not, players signing on 12-month deals, what are we selling people here? It feels like we\u2019re living hand to mouth waiting for\u2026\u2026what?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rochdale next. Gulp. Next up, top of the league Rochdale away from home. That one speaks for itself. Another clear week, another chance to take a breath and I hope the pain we all feel \u2013 and yes I include the team, they must feel it \u2013 gets a reaction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yeovil Town\u2019s FA Cup dream came to a premature end at the first hurdle for the second successive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-194808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}