YEOVIL TOWN have responded well to an awful start to the season but the promotion challenge never materialised.

The Glovers finished fourth last season before losing 2-0 at home to Barnet in their play-off eliminator.

Getting over that disappointment took longer than hoped as Yeovil failed to win any of their opening 10 games when the 2020-21 campaign kicked off.

Five draws and five defeats left Darren Sarll’s side bottom of the table.

Chairman Scott Priestnall said Sarll, who took over in the summer of 2019 following the club’s relegation from the Football League, had his “full support”, despite the club’s lowly position and he has turned things around.

A first victory of the season came on December 8 when Yeovil triumphed 2-1 at Bromley, and the Glovers were one of the form teams in the division at the start of the year as they continued to make winning a habit.

The improvement, and rise up the table, left the Huish Park outfit in the top half of the table when they beat Woking 2-1 on March 13.

But inconsistency set in and hopes of clinching a top-seven finish faded while the sudden death of captain Lee Collins at the age of 32 in early April shocked the footballing world.

Yeovil have still picked up wins but a 5-1 thrashing away at Solihull Moors on April 24 showed Sarll that the Glovers, 16th in the table heading into tomorrow’s game at Wrexham, will have to be a lot better in 2021-22.

“I thought we looked really mentally tired today,” said Sarll. “If you look at our decision making, force or even energy, I think we looked really fatigued mentally and it can’t be down to our physicality as we’ve had a clear week of playing.

“Mentally, there’s probably a real good reason for that, but four of their five goals were from set-pieces. This is the National League but any league and we’ve just got to control the box much better aerially. I thought we were very poor of that, and the two centre-backs know my feelings on that.

“What I found out about this team especially after our injury crisis is that I think we have a personality weakness. A character weakness, a lack of resilience weakness more so from the younger ones, but they’re developing that on our shift which wasn’t good enough.

“From now on in, we’ve got to try and develop that mentality in a way. We got well and truly beaten up and the type of person I think I am and the character that I am, that will become unforgivable.

"There’s nothing to be scared of when it comes to playing a game of football.

“Full credit to Solihull who left a mark on us. We need to respond now, but we shouldn’t have to be responding to games if we want to be up there. We need to get it right the first-time round.

“We’ve got to be much more tough and resilient and that’s certainly what we had last year when we came here.

"We had a little moment in the tunnel with Solihull and this team was the ‘tough’ team, the resilient team, the hardened team, but we looked weak, young and need to better if we’re going to come out on top in games.”

Yeovil, 10 points away from the play-off, have five games left after facing Wrexham and Sarll will be looking for a strong finish before refocussing on next season.

There have been positives for Sarll and Rhys Murphy and Joe Quigley, who had a loan spell with Wrexham in 2015-16 under Gary Mills, have hit it off in attack, scoring 13 and 11 goals respectively to help the Glovers recover from the poor start they endured.