Mark Robinson felt that a lack of attacking options on the substitutes’ bench made it difficult to conjure up a late equaliser against Plymouth today.
A calf injury to Ollie Palmer restricted him to bench duty today and Jack Rudoni was also missing on a day when the Dons had been struggling to find the cutting edge that had been so evident this season.
“We didn’t create a lot in the last 15 minutes and it was probably the first time that we had a lack of options on the bench. I checked on Ollie and he didn’t feel good enough to go on, and obviously we didn’t have Rudi. It was probably the first time that we didn’t have the attacking options on the bench.
“I thought we were really good in the first half an hour, we created lots of chances, but we haven’t taken them. The decision-making in the final third wasn’t good enough, but it’s really small margins. We had seen that they played through Sheffield Wednesday when they won 3-0, but that wasn’t the case today as we made them go long in the first-half.
“Apart from scoring a couple of goals, we were very good in the first-half. We got done in the second-half and I will have to take a look at that, but Nik has held his hands up and said he dropped back. I just said to him that he can’t let what happened last week take away from what we do. What happened last week was 1 in 10,000. We’ve got to keep doing what we had been doing, so there’s no problem there.”
Robbo believes that the match officials could have offered more protection to our attacking talent Ayoub Assal, who was on the receiving end of some rough treatment at times.
“Every game they are taking it in turns, I don’t know if it’s because of his size, but when he goes down he doesn’t get anything,” added Robbo. “I was trying to explain to the fourth official that with the way we play we lose so much flow. We get dragged back, and we may get an advantage here and there, but it just affects our flow. He’s certainly not getting the rub of the green. He’s been booked four times, once for taking his shirt off, but players are taking turns to kick and bully him. It is what it is, but we just need to deal with it.”