Mark Bowen was brutally honest in his assessment of today’s damaging loss to Crewe Alexandra.
Sam Cosgrove’s spectacular long-range effort had put Wimbledon in front after just 19 minutes, but things slowly unravelled in the second half as we left the Mornflake Stadium empty handed.
A catalogue of errors ultimately proved to be our undoing as both Mikael Mandron and Chris Long scored in the space of two second half minutes, before Bassala Sambou added a third in the 98th minute.
It was a collapse that most people couldn’t have foreseen, and it understandably left our manager searching for answers.
“My first thoughts are a lot of anger," said Mark. "I share the fans’ anger. They’ve sat through it for what they feel is far too long now. I’m still learning about this group. I saw things today that really hit home to me. I heard players saying things at half time in the dressing room and meaning it, but that’s a safe place. It’s when they go onto the pitch that the spotlight is on them.
“We gave away a terrible goal. We started the second-half poorly. We put ourselves under pressure needlessly. With what’s gone on here over the last six months, you can literally see the confidence draining out of the players. They need to show more mental strength, more resilience and more heart at times.”
Looking more at the grand scheme of things - we now have three league games to preserve our League One status – it's a task that has been made harder after the gap to safety was increased to four points.
“We’ve got a huge job on our hands now,” admitted Mark. “We need to go into the Wycombe game and show the sort of signs that we’ve seen during my first three games here. We’ve got to come back - we’ve got to get ourselves together in order to be mentally prepared for Monday’s game.”
Pic credit: Ian Stephen, Pro Sports Images.