Mark Robinson was disappointed not to mark today’s big occasion with a victory – and he said the players must learn lessons from the 3-3 draw.
Speaking after an emotional day that was all about Wimbledon supporters attending a league game at Plough Lane for the first time in 30 years, Robbo said: “I am disappointed, we wanted to give the fans a win. I know it was a historical game and it was all about coming back to Plough Lane, but we wanted to round it off with a win, and we haven’t done that.
"There are lots of lessons to be learned, and we are disappointed for the fans that we haven’t given them that win. At least it was an entertaining game, and we showed some character again, which was important.
“It’s all part of the learning process, I think it will be good for us and we can move on from it. Nik made a great save, which was so important, because I never felt we were out of the game, even at 3-1. I knew we would create chances, but that save was obviously important. At half-time we went in 2-1 down, but what did he have to do? Very little, the same as in the last two games. The lads have got to look at the goals and rectify those errors because teams will look at them and will try to expose us, and we can’t let that happen.
“This might have been the bit of a wake-up call that we needed. We’ve got to be hard to beat, and we looked that last Saturday and on Tuesday, but I felt that Bolton were a real threat on the break.
“Our shape behind the ball wasn’t good enough, and our ball retention wasn’t good enough in the final third. We didn’t work things out quickly enough in terms of what they were doing. They caused us problems with players running from deep off the back of us. There are things that we have to improve upon, but we will be all right.”
Robbo praised the impact of substitutes Henry Lawrence, Aaron Pressley, and Dapo Mabude with the latter two scoring vital goals to earn a draw.
“We changed shape at half-time, and some people may think it didn’t work because we went 3-1 down, but I actually think it worked as we were on the front foot,” added our Head Coach. “I thought that we caused them problems by having natural width. We gave the ball away and they countered on us far too easily for the goal, and that was an issue throughout the game.
“At 3-1 down, we brought the three lads on and I thought they were excellent. They gave us the lift we needed, as well as other players playing really well. Ayoub and Woody were excellent in there too. The substitutions gave us that bit of quality that we had been lacking. They were really exciting and we had a couple of breaks where I thought it was going to happen for us again. Dapo had a bit of a heavy touch after he had linked up well with Aaron. They are exciting players.”
You can listen to Rob Cornell’s full post-match interview with Robbo by clicking on the link below.