Manager praises work rate of Dons wingers
Neal Ardley is pleased the Dons have got their first Sky Bet League One point on the table after keeping a clean sheet at Northampton Town.
“A clean sheet and a first point is always good,” said Neal in an interview to Dons Player after the goalless draw at Sixfields Stadium.” We didn’t come here for a draw, we had a go at them first half territorially with the wind and were the better team. We just lacked a bit of quality and belief.”
“Second half it was harder playing in to the wind and I thought we played the situation well and we worked incredibly hard and I thought our two wide men Chris Whelpdale (pictured) and Andy Barcham worked tirelessly down the flanks. It ended up with a decent point from a game we could have actually nicked a goal from,” he added.
“It was really tough out there today and their keeper is a decent kicker of the ball and you could see how much he was struggling with the wind in the first half,” said the manager about the difficult, windy conditions. “It was tough and it was never going to be a brilliant, free-flowing game in these conditions, but we’re happy we’re off the mark and we know we’ve got a lot of work to do. We did a lot of work on our shape yesterday.”
“We wanted to come here and put a classic away performance in and make sure we were solid without the ball and we were that today.”
“We’ve got a really tough away game (at Rochdale) next week and we’ve got to prepare for that as best as we can and we need to make sure that all the good work we did today doesn’t go out the window next week,” added Neal looking ahead.
“We’ve got the Premier League Cup game on Tuesday night and George Francomb and Jon Meades will get some playing time, so too Tom Beere and Dominic Poleon down at Kingsmeadow. It’s great because by the end of the week we could have some selection problems.”
The full post-match reaction from Neal Ardley is now available on our premium Dons Player HD channel.