Simon Bassey saw some positive signs in Wimbledon’s performance at Doncaster, but he was ultimately left disappointed as the Dons slipped to a late defeat at the Keepmoat Stadium.
Wimbledon took a deserved first-half lead after a fine finish by Mitch Pinnock. However, a spectacular strike by Ali Crawford from a free-kick and a goal shortly before full-time, from the returning Tommy Rowe, clinched all three points for hosts Doncaster Rovers.
“I’m really disappointed with the closing of the game,” said Simon in an interview with our premium iFollows Dons channel. “We had good intensity to our play in the first half, a good goal and we could maybe have had another. I thought we were the team that were going to score again in the first half - then we switched off. We’d worked really hard this week on getting up to the ball, but ultimately we‘ve switched off twice and been punished for it. We were beaten by two shots from outside the box which we should get closer too.
“They changed their game a little bit in the second half, as the home team and in the ascendency. Maybe our levels dropped a little bit and we couldn’t quite regain our composure. I thought we were going to see the game out, if I’m honest. It was a very debatable foul for the free-kick and then we didn’t get organised quickly enough, we didn’t get behind the ball. They took it and it’s a finish from outside the box that left us disappointed.”
Despite an eighth successive league defeat, our Interim Manager remains determined to help Wimbledon pull away from the wrong end of the table with Southend at home up next.
“We’ll dissect the game, we’ll correct the errors, we’ll address them and as I’ve told the boys we’ve got another game to win next week,” said Simon.
“Mitch (Pinnock) has got a lovely left foot. We put him in areas. He had another couple of opportunities and maybe should have done better with one of them. It's good for Mitch that he scored, but we need to turn things into points.
“We tinkered with the system. We played two sitting midfielders and brought Anthony (Wordsworth) in. We looked at Doncaster and thought we’d cause them a problem and nullify their strengths by playing wide players in the positions we played them in. For parts of the game it worked quite well. We could have passed the ball better in the second half, when we could have steadied the game, but we didn’t. We came to not get beat, but ultimately we’ve succumbed to a late effort.”
The full interview with Interim Manager Simon Bassey is available on our iFollow Dons video platform.
Pic Credit: Aaron Lupton (Pro Sports Images).