Fans and players can combine to boost home form
tomorrow before selecting his squad to face Scunthorpe United this Saturday.Alan Bennettwill check on the fitness of captain Neal Ardley
Bennett (hamstring) will be assessed in the morning ahead of Scunthorpe’s first visit to the Cherry Red Records Stadium since an FA Cup tie in November, 2011, which ended in a 0-0 draw and a Wimbledon win in the replay.
this afternoon, Neal Ardley has called on Wimbledon’s supporters to help his side get back to winning ways after Saturday’s setback at Exeter City. Neal says that Wimbledon’s management team and the players have been doing everything in training this week to put things right.Dons PlayerSpeaking to
“I have watched the Exeter match twice since and it was particularly painful – my blood was boiling watching it,” said Neal. “You have to try and take that emotion out of it though when you are dealing with the lads. They say with video analysis that you should try and pick out positives, but I struggled to do that, particularly in the first-half. It is not the right approach to single people out, even though you need to show certain players when bad decisions were made. It is for the greater good so that everyone can learn from it.
“We have had good training sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We have maintained the same theme of working on two or three things that we need to get back to basics on; if we can get these right then it will make our performance levels higher.
“The players have said that we need to turn our home ground into a fortress; these words are all well and good, but every team in the league will be thinking like this. We have to get our performance levels high and the fans can really play a big part in this. After the away matches against Torquay we had players coming into the dressing room and saying how good our fans were. If we can recreate that for the home games, of course the players have to do their bit, then we can turn our ground into a fortress. I look back at the matches against Fleetwood Town and Northampton, the fans were really noisy in those games, and it would be great to recreate that again.”
returned to light training this week, but he is not yet considered ready for a first-team return.Will AntwiCentre-back
Dons Player subscribers can now watch the full video interview with Neal Ardley and we will feature the thoughts of Chris Arthur on our premium site tomorrow.