Paul Cook rues defensive frailties as Chesterfield leave it late to beat Yeovil

Chesterfield manager Paul Cook expressed his frustration at the goals conceded by his team after they withstood a Yeovil comeback to triumph 4-3 following Josh Randall’s late winner.

Yeovil took the lead from Slavi Spasov’s penalty before Chesterfield equalised through Jack Simpson and Josh Koroma then put them in front just before the break.

After Simpson scored his second goal of the game, Yeovil levelled with efforts from James Daly and Hayden Muller before Randall scored an 89th-minute decider.

Cook said: “Probably epitomises our season so far. If it could be encapsulated in a game, it was probably that.

“We do such good stuff on a football pitch. We play some really, really good football. But first penalty box entry from Yeovil after 30 or so minutes, penalty goal.

“On the second goal, it was their second penalty box entry in the game and they scored.

“Now, if you’ve got any type of knowledge of football, you’ll either say we’re ridiculously unlucky or there’s a fundamental problem. So we’ll just keep working hard behind the scenes to be better.”

Yeovil manager Billy Rowley had no complaints about the result, admitting they were beaten by the better team.

He said: “I think it was a little bit flattering on our side. I know they’re 10th in their league, but they will not finish 10th. They’ll finish easily in the play-offs.

“On the flip side of that, we came here with, not going to say one hand tied behind our back, but we’re obviously missing our captain, missing (Ben) Radcliffe, missing Jordan Norville-Williams, missing Archie Davies.

“We’ve got an under-18 Liam Nardiello on the bench. We couldn’t fill a bench but enough of the excuses, we got beaten by definitely the better team today. I thought they were better than us.”