Reaction from assistant manager after defeat at Southend
Neil Cox summed up his disappointment with the defending that handed Southend the initiative today and he is expecting a positive response at Bristol Rovers on New Year’s Eve.
Our assistant manager was full of praise for Wimbledon’s travelling support with 646 away fans watching a second-half improvement that was derailed by Lyle Taylor’s sending off.
“Every time we’ve had a bit of a disappointing result we’ve had a right good fight back,” said Neil. “The boys were in there afterwards having a chat about it. We will get them ready and organised so that we are ready to go again for New Year’s Eve. We had fantastic support yet again with brilliant travelling fans. We are a bit disappointed with the way we played in the first 30 minutes, but we had a right good go and on another day we could have got something from the game.
“We showed a lot of character in the second-half and played a bit more on the front foot. We had nothing to lose and Tyrone came on and caused them problems. On another day he could have had a couple of goals, but he was a bit unlucky. Then the third goal went in because we were chasing the game. We left three versus two at the back and we got punished for it.”
Neil added that Wimbledon paid the price for failing to defend set-pieces adequately, something that the squad had been prepared for.
“It was the first 20 minutes,” said Neil. “We did a lot of work on their set-pieces, including defending throw-ins, and we went over it again this morning, but we did not start the game well. We got punished from a long throw-in with a flick-on and Simon Cox was left unmarked at the back post. That was really disappointing on the day.”
Neil said that he did not have a good enough view of the incident that led to Lyle Taylor’s sending off to assess if he was harshly treated by the referee.
shortly. Dons PlayerThe full post-match reaction from Neil Cox will follow on