Johnnie Jackson felt tonight’s performance was a far cry from what we have come to expect from this Wimbledon team.
The Dons fell to a 3-1 defeat in Buckinghamshire, with three first-half goals in the opening 20 minutes ultimately deciding the match as a contest before two red cards for Huseyin Biler and Paul Kalambayi compounded a night to forget.
Wimbledon did show some spirit to provide a glimmer of hope in the second-half, but it was too little, too late, as we came away empty handed.
Here Johnnie provides his reaction and discusses how we can look to bounce back.
ON THE PERFORMANCE…
The first-half was completely unacceptable, it wasn’t good enough for the football club and it wasn’t good enough for the supporters. We were unrecognisable from the team that we’ve been this season. We didn’t show anything that we’re good at, that’s given us success this season, and that’s the most frustrating thing.
We were second to everything - headers, tackles. I told the lads that if they hadn’t been wearing yellow and blue, I wouldn’t have recognised that as my Wimbledon team. Normally, you could put them in green and white stripes and still recognise that it’s us.
We’ve given them three goals through soft defending. And then in the second-half we’ve seen a response. We had some words with them at half-time, we needed to do something different, and it gives us something to take into the coming games. John-Kymani Gordon did well and put a shift in up top, we wanted to bring Ronan Curtis on, but the second red card changed our thinking.
We showed a lot of spirit in that second-half, but it was too late, the game was gone. The game fully got taken away from us when the red cards came.
The red card for Hus is probably a red but you have to also look at the challenge Warren O’Hora made on Josh Davison at the end of the first-half – it’s exactly the same foul, the only difference was Josh not going down.
The sending off for PK made the task more or less impossible, but we showed good resilience with nine men. I wanted to see that spirit from the off. It hurts, I hope it hurts the boys as much as it hurts the supporters.
ON OUR FANS…
They clapped the boys off at the end when we didn’t deserve it. The one positive from tonight is how they got behind their football club and I thank them for that. We’ve shown we can bounce back as a team before – we need to put things right on Saturday.
Johnnie also confirmed that Ryan Johnson was substituted due to an ankle injury – the extent of which is yet to be determined. Ryan McLean was withdrawn from our bench through illness, with the winger being replaced by Isaac Ogundere.
MATCH PICS: Ian Stephen (Pro Sports Images)