By Rob Cornell
Alan Reeves watched his development side execute his orders near enough to the letter - and they were rewarded with an opening day victory at AFC Bournemouth.
"I was delighted with the performance - if I said I was pleased it would be an understatement," said Alan in an interview to our premium iFollow Dons channel.
"As I said in the build-up, we came to Bournemouth with a game plan. We knew how they were going to play, our game was high-tempo, be in their faces and don't let them settle.
"When they came in at half-time, I said to them 'you might not be able to keep this going', but fair play to them as they just kept going and going.
"They had a couple of chances late on, which might have been an injustice had they come off, what with our work rate. We had a couple of chances first half especially and a penalty claim and another couple of shots in the box – but on the whole there were some really good performances out there.
Alan was also able to deliver a positive report to Neal Ardley afterwards on the fitness of two of his first-team players – as both attacking midfielders Tom Soares and Harry Forrester got some important game time.
Soares played for the first-half in his first match since recovering from a thigh injury, while Forrester accumulated more vital minutes on the pitch as he works on his match fitness.
"Tom and Harry both played really well for the minutes they were on the pitch. I asked Tom at half-time how he felt and he told me his hamstring was tightening up a bit, so I said that'll do for you and to come off.
"Bournemouth are a Premier League outfit and their young lads are technically very good, so it was a good work out for Tom. Quite a bit of the time we were out of possession so we relied on Tom defensively.
"Harry played for three quarters of the game and that was the plan to bring him off as there were a couple of young lads I wanted to look at. He was great and scored a really good goal that went in off the post and both he and Egli Kaja were a threat down the wings," said Alan.
The full post-match reaction from Alan Reeves and an interview with Tom Soares are available to subscribers of our iFollow Dons channel.