Wally Downes felt that his players deserved a point from tonight’s visit to Ipswich Town after Wimbledon slipped to a last-gasp defeat at Portman Road.
Speaking after the 2-1 loss, Wally said: “It’s always tough to take because I felt that it was a very good performance. I told the boys not to be too disappointed, but the mistakes have been made and we have to rectify them. I don’t want us to be one of those teams that plays well, but doesn’t come away with anything. We have to be hard and ruthless and when we get the chance to earn all three points we have to see the game out. Certainly, when it gets to 1-1 and they are throwing the kitchen sink at us we have to be solid enough and do our jobs stoutly.
“I don’t think we got what we deserved and we have to take the performance into Sunderland against another big club at a big stadium. It will be another tough test. I thought we played well, apart from a couple of mistakes, which I’m sure we will be able to rectify. I thought it was a very encouraging performance. We were not sure how Ipswich would play. They had been very direct, but they changed around their team tonight. We came here to win and I thought in the first-half it was a complete performance: we contained them and we looked dangerous on the break. They made a few changes at the break and we had to adjust to it. We lost the man for the corner and there was a technique failure for the clearance at the end.
“No two halves are ever the same. We knew that there would be a rallying call from the manager and the fans would get behind them, but I thought we had weathered it well. They were desperate to get the goals and we should have been more ruthless in our defending. You can’t afford to let goals in from set plays and we’ve been doing that quite a bit this season.”
Our manager praised the support provided by 667 travelling Wimbledon fans for the team.
“The fans were terrific and they gave us fantastic support tonight. I’m sorry I didn’t get over and give them a wave, but I was a bit disappointed and I made a mistake, I should have gone over. The boys went over there and showed their appreciation for the support. The boys put on a great performance, but it was unfortunate that we were not able to come away with something."