Wimbledon manager's pride after Coventry loss
said his side produced their best performance since he took over as manager after a gallant FA Cup defeat at the hands of Coventry.Neal Ardley
The Wimbledon manager was full of praise for his players after they gave League 1 Coventry a big scare, before three goals in a crazy 13-minute spell dumped the Dons out.
, Neal said: “I wanted our players to do the fans and the club proud and I thought they were excellent. Their goalkeeper was man of the match and we could have been 3-0 up at half-time. I think if they did not get that first goal then we would have won the game. They had not carved us open and we may have won the game 2-0.Dons PlayerSpeaking to
“I can pick holes in the second goal, but I cannot do anything about the first or the third goals. No one could say anything about our players for those two goals. Seb has made a mistake and we have to live with that. Goals change games, but that was as good a performance as we have produced since I have been here. The football that we played was outstanding.”
had not arrived at The Cherry Red Records Stadium until after the full-time whistle with severe delays on the A3 meaning that Wimbledon’s number one was stuck in traffic for five hours.Ross WornerNeal confirmed afterwards that
However, Neal preferred to concentrate on talking about the positives on the night and he wants his team to repeat those performance levels against Portsmouth on Saturday week.
“It was a great team performance,” Neal added. “From Tuesday until Friday we worked really hard on this and the players gave everything I asked of them. On another day we would have won with that display. It is disappointing to go out because we all wanted to go through to the second round. We have a nice clear week now and we must make sure we produce those performance levels against Portsmouth.”
Dons Player subscribers can now watch the full video interview with Neal Ardley.