Simon Bassey has praised Scott Wagstaff’s impact in front of goal and he believes that the midfielder can continue his scoring streak.
Following two goals in two games, Scott will be aiming to score for a third successive match tonight when Bradford City visit the Cherry Red Records Stadium.
“When we signed Scott we looked through his record and he had that good season, which was mentioned in the programme article on Saturday, when he scored 10 goals at Charlton,” said Simon. “We know that he has goals in him. Last year at Gillingham he played as a wing-back at times and in a few different positions, but we are encouraging him to get into the box. Certainly, he has shown that with both of his goals. It was an excellent finish from Scott at Accrington, coming in off the left onto his right foot, and it was a really brave header on Saturday. He can score all types of goals. It was good to get him off the mark and we hope for that to continue.
“We create a lot of crossing opportunities, so to get people into the right areas to score goals is something that we work regularly on in training. To see that come to fruition on Saturday was a good sign for us.”
Below is the programme article on Scott that featured in Saturday’s match day programme against Oxford and it certainly did the trick!
Having struck his first league goal since 2016 at Accrington, Scott Wagstaff is determined to roll back the years by making it more of a regular habit this season.
Back in 2010/11, Scott fired home 10 goals from midfield for previous club Charlton Athletic and a bit more of the same will certainly be well received by Dons supporters!
Scott’s goal in the 2-1 defeat up in Lancashire on Saturday was his first one in the league since 27 September 2016 for Gillingham against Chesterfield, though he has scored in the FA Cup and Checkatrade Trophy since then.
After scoring his first goal for the Dons since joining in the summer, Scott said: “It’s been a while coming! I didn’t score in the league last season for Gillingham, so it was good to get off the mark quite early in my Wimbledon career. ‘Trotts’ (Liam Trotter) played me in and I felt I had a bit more time on the ball than I probably did. In the end, I managed to see the defender sliding in on me, cut inside him, and hit it. Their keeper said to me afterwards that he thought I was going to go low with it. It was nice to see it go in, but I wished it had come in better circumstances with the team getting a result.
“Hopefully, I can chip in with a few more and help the strikers out a bit. I need to make sure though that I keep it up and keep getting into the positions to score goals. In any sport, it’s always about confidence. If you shy away from getting into the positions to score, then it’s not going to happen. I need to make sure that I’m in the right place at the right time. I want that to be the first of many for me.
“In the season when I scored 10 at Charlton I was playing right midfield or on the right of a three. It was an attacking team with Phil Parkinson as manager and I was getting on the back stick to score from crosses quite a bit. Our manager here is trying to get that into me now again. He wants me and the other wide men to get more involved in the box. We’ve put in some good quality crosses into the box, but we need to get on the end of the deliveries more.”
Scott shared the disappointment of the 220 Dons fans that travelled up to support the team at Accrington and he stressed the importance of picking up points in the coming games.
“We need to get off the mark at home and get that first win,” added Scott. “That will breed confidence. If we are going to do anything this season we need to do well in these three games coming up. It’s a massive game against Oxford, all the boys know it, and we are going to go into it looking for three points.
“We feel the disappointment of the fans, we really do. It does hurt us and you could sense that in the dressing room after the game on Saturday. You could see what it meant to the boys, but there’s point talking about it, and we need to make sure we do it on the pitch. The fans travelled all that way up to Accrington, paying all that money to watch us, and the boys really do appreciate it. It was disappointing that we could not at least pick-up a point. It was good to see the fans stick with us though, they applauded us off the pitch. You would not get that at some other clubs. We want to work really hard to put things right and start picking up the points.”