Glyn Hodges said that his squad can take plenty of confidence from the performances against Peterborough United and Burton Albion.
The thrilling 2-2 draw against Albion meant that Wimbledon have taken four points from a possible six against two teams in the League One top-10.
Glyn praised his players for the fightback against Nigel Clough’s men, though he was disappointed with a ‘passive’ first-half display.
“We should take confidence from the fact that we’ve had two hard home games against Peterborough and Burton – two teams flying high to try and get into the Championship – and we’ve won one and drawn one," said Glyn. "We more than deserved what we got out of the games. The way that we came back in the second-half with the commitment, and never-say-die attitude shown, was a credit to the boys, they deserved a point.
“It was another famous game of two halves again! We set a gameplan up, but we were too passive in the first-half. We wanted to be cute, catch them, to try to read how they were going to play, and to change things slightly, but we didn’t lay a glove on them. It wasn’t great and coming in 2-1 down it was an easy one for me. I just said that when big teams come down here we have to make sure that they work their socks off to get anything. We will make it as difficult as possible for any team that comes down here and we did that in the second-half, so we got our just desserts with the equaliser.
“We had shown them too much respect in the first-half and that’s because they have good players. They are flying up the league and they are always a difficult team to play against, but I said at half-time that we had to win our personal battles and make them work a bit harder than they did in the first-half. I felt that we did that and took the game to them.”
Glyn said that referee John Busby got it wrong when he refused to send off Burton keeper Kieran O’Hara for an apparent handball outside the box.
“It definitely hit his hand and it was definitely outside the box, but unfortunately the referee didn’t get a good view and neither did the fourth official and the linesman on that side,” added Glyn. “You have to take their word for it, they’ve missed it. Mitch went around the keeper and scored and maybe Pigs might have done the same, so that was a chance lost. I don’t want anyone to get sent off, but sometimes 10 men galvanises the other team. We are not complaining about the referee and maybe if we had done more in the first-half we could have won the game.”
Pic credit: Matt Redman, Pro Sports Images.