Neal Ardley felt his players put in a performance that merited three points today and he believes the Dons were denied a clear injury-time penalty.
Speaking to iFollow after the 0-0 draw against Coventry City at the Cherry Red Records Stadium, Neal Ardley said: "I would have liked the three points and I felt that we deserved them, but you have to give credit to Coventry. I thought they were really disciplined and they worked incredibly hard without the ball. They limited the flow of some of our attacking, but I still thought we had good spells when we had chances to score. Tom Soares had a great one he should score and Kwesi headed over. I cannot fault anything in the team. I said to them, 'be disappointed that you did not get the points, but don't be disappointed with anything else'. We looked like a good team, very cohesive with the players knowing their jobs. We looked like we had threats and the intention was to try and score goals.
"Sometimes when you come up against a team like that, a goal when the moment comes, creates the chances that you will have later in the game. If you get one, they have to push to get the equaliser, and all of a sudden you get more chances. They had something to cling onto and then it ends 0-0. I was a bit disappointed at the end with the penalty. I've watched it back and it's as clear as day. Scott Wagstaff gets ahead of their full-back: you can see a blue sock getting to the ball first, he knocks it in front of him, but he is scythed down from behind. If that was in the first minute we may have been given it."
Neal added that today's performance provided further evidence that his new-look squad had adapted well to the way he wants them to play this season.
"Sometimes when you get a new team, it can look like you are piecing it together," said Neal. "We've done so much work on the training ground and the boys have taken it on board. I want to try and put a younger and hungrier team together. We've done our best to put a team together that will score goals and make things happen. I think today we put something like 27 crosses into the box and we had our chances from them, but unfortunately we did not take them."
The full interview with Neal is on our iFollow channel.