Wally Downes said that Wimbledon played into Accrington’s hands in the second-half by playing ‘aimless’ balls forward in an effort to gain all three points.
Our manager said that his players lacked the guile to break down their opponents after they were reduced to 10 men.
Speaking in his post-match interview after the 1-1 draw, Wally said: “I thought we were terrific in the first-half. When we got in at half-time we said it was all about starting again and emphasising that the clean sheet would have got us the three points, but we wanted them to push on and make sure we won the second-half. When they went down to 10 men we should have been able to circulate the ball a bit more, move the ball, make them run, and make them charge. I’d said to the boys at half-time that to exploit the big man at the back we needed to put the ball down the side of him because Michael was getting a lot of joy with that.
“When they went to 10 men and I was asking us to play a little bit more football we didn’t do that. We still kept playing aimless balls forward. When you play against 10 men you need to be bright enough and sharp enough to change the way that you play. We didn’t do that in the second-half.
“We tried to get overloads down the outside and get people in and that worked for the first goal, but we needed to do more of it. There were great opportunities to do it in the second-half, but we didn’t do it enough. We didn’t effect the game enough with 20 minutes to go.”
You can watch the full interview with Wally by clicking on the link below.