Having won so many friends among QPR supporters during the 2013/14 Championship season it's been a shame to see Yeovil slip back down to League Two. How has it happened, how can it be stopped?

Yeovil Town, the little football club that could, is finding the gradient on the way down the other side of the mountain a lot steeper than anticipated.

Relegated twice in little more than 12 months, with three managers in that time and two almost entire turnovers of the playing squad, their momentum is now all in one direction and will be difficult to arrest.

There was always a feeling of “just happy to be here” about Yeovil’s 2013/14 Championship campaign. It was as high as they’d ever been in the league structure, and came little more than a decade after they’d entered the Football League for the first time.

League fixtures against the likes of Leeds, Derby and Forest seemed surreal, both for the home fans and the visitors. Every taxi driver within a 50 mile radius would pack the tiny car park at Yeovil Junction train station, taking advantage of the fact that it’s neither a junction nor in Yeovil to ferry bemused fans more used to trips to Anfield and St James’ Park into the town. The mad scramble for cabs afterwards, and the hideously overcrowded trains back to London, gave it a last chopper out of Saigon feeling but the welcome was as friendly as any you’re likely to experience. The whole place just seemed thrilled to be experiencing it.

But Yeovil were far from the division’s quaint little whipping boys, patronising pats on the had following regular 5-0 defeats. They amassed 37 points that season which, while ultimately not good enough to survive, was a reasonably competitive effort and miraculous given the resources they had at their disposal. There were away wins at Millwall, Watford, Birmingham and Blackpool. Forest were beaten at Huish Park. They got draws at Wigan, Leicester, Reading and Bolton. QPR needed a fine performance from Rob Green and late penalty from Charlie Austin to win in Somerset, and Yeovil had a perfectly good goal disallowed with the score at 0-0 in the return fixture at Loftus Road. They were bottom, seven points shy of safety, but it was a creditable effort and they won plenty of friends along the way.

Behind the scenes, though, several damaging things were taking place all at the same time. The first directly related to the team that could be fielded each Saturday and involved manager Gary Johnson. Having managed their promotion from non-league into the Football League during his first spell, and then guided them into the second tier for the first time in his second, Johnson will undoubtedly be seen as the club’s greatest ever manager. But there was a feeling that the stress and frustration of trying to keep a club in the Championship on a budget that most League Two clubs would struggle to stretch across everything required sent him a bit Nigel Pearson.

Before the season had begun Paddy Madden, who’d been rated as one of the brightest prospects outside the Premier League after bagging 24 goals in 42 appearances the year before, including one in the Wembley play-off final victory against Brentford, was dropped, transfer listed and eventually sold off to Scunthorpe United on the cheap.

You’d ordinarily back your manager every time in a disciplinary issue like that, lest you completely undermine his authority with the rest of the squad, but the old saying about once being unlucky and twice being careless came to mind as it happened again. Ishmael Miller, an eye-catching addition from Nottingham Forest who scored 10 goals across two loan spells with the club, stormed out of a team meeting and vowed never to play for Johnson again. Ed Upson, a mainstay of the club’s midfield, left for Millwall. It was never a squad player, never somebody dispensable, always somebody absolutely integral to the team that Johnson fell out with. There was a suggestion that it was to do with ego, that he was Mr Yeovil and nobody else could be bigger or better than him at the club.

But, more damagingly long term, the ongoing saga over the club’s Huish Park development plans have now dragged on into a fourth year. Yeovil would like to use the land next to their stadium, currently known as a frequently water-logged overspill car park, to build a supermarket and retail park which would help to finance the redevelopment of the uncovered away end, and give the team’s manager a more workable budget to put his squad together with. But building on Metropolitan open land was always likely to be a complicated planning issue and so it has proved, dragging on from 2012 to the present day. Yeovil Town this summer applied for permission to build cricket and football pitches and changing facilities on a separate piece of land on the other side of the town, to try and appease planners into releasing the land next to their stadium for development. The latest application will be considered shortly.

Without that money, Johnson seemed to lose heart after the relegation. He said in an interview with the Western Gazette that a second consecutive relegation could easily occur if the purse strings weren’t loosened — “we can’t keep pulling rabbits out of hats” — and so it proved. Johnson, and Yeovil, completely failed to put together a competitive League One team having sold off the likes of Luke Ayling who’d impressed in the Championship. An FA Cup home game with Man Utd was a rare highlight but Johnson was sacked soon after. It was actually a surprise it had taken that long, Johnson had a very public falling out with chairman John Fry as early as September over the club’s failure to bring in new blood at the end of the transfer window.

Assistant Terry Skiverton lasted only a dozen games as his replacement, sacked after six straight defeats. Paul Sturrock, who’d only taken an advisory role at Torquay United four days before, was appointing in his stead but his role was more crash scene investigator than escape artist, charged with picking over the rubble and making sure it didn’t happen again. Yeovil were relegated with four matches of the regular season still to play and, for the second summer in a row, promptly offloaded almost their entire playing staff. Kevin Dawson is one of only four players who were here in May and one of the others, Simon Gillett, is injured long-term.

Sturrock had has an odd career in England. When he oversaw the transformation of Plymouth Argyle from Division Three side in a derelict ground to a Championship outfit in a redeveloped ground he was hot property and was poached by Premier League Southampton. A premature sacking, barely a month into the new season, sent him back down into the lower divisions and staid, non-descript spells with Sheff Wed and Southend have followed. He’s been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and those who don’t know often make unfortunate jokes about him being drunk in interviews as he slurs his answers and wobbles around. You wonder how he comes across to players in the dressing room and one the training field.

There have been 12 arrivals on free transfers and five loans this summer. Perhaps unsurprising then to see them beaten in a derby match at Exeter on day one — all three of the home team’s goals, and countless other chances besides, coming either by attacking Yeovil down the right (their left) or simply knocking a hopeful ball behind a square back four, turning them around and making hay in the ensuing panic. But the fight back from 2-0 down to 2-2 before finally losing 3-2 suggests there’s at least some more spirit about the Glovers this season. Sturrock may just be the man to arrest the slide.

Links >>> Official website >>> Dream becoming a nightmare — interview >>> Yeovil Express local newspaper >>> The Green Room forum >>> Ciderspace, main fan site and forum >>> Vital Yeovil>>> Western Gazette regional newspaper

The Twitter @loftforwords

Pictures — Action Images

Photo: Action Images

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