Johnnie Jackson, manager of AFC Wimbledon, believed his team had a “better chance” of defeating Chesterfield in the second half.
Although there was a lot of effort and energy at Plough Lane, the game had few opportunities, and a goalless draw was most likely the outcome.
“I definitely thought we were the team more likely to win it in the second half,” Jackson stated. We tried to collect all three points by probing. They might have dominated the first half, but I believe we held them to very little in the second half, and they haven’t had a shot on goal the entire time, so we were fairly comfortable on defence.
“We made a strong offensive drive, but maybe both teams may claim they didn’t put enough effort into forcing the rival keeper to make a save. You have to respect a point against them because they are a solid team, hard to beat, have great players, and pose a threat on the counterattack. We attempted to obtain all three, but we were unable to do so. Two strong teams were competing head-to-head.
Jackson would not accept that his team’s failure to overcome the Spireites was down to the fact that they had played with ten men against Doncaster Rovers the previous time out.
He continued: “Today was a closely fought game, it was really tight. If you go too gung-ho against a team like this they are going to pick you off so we tried to get the balance right between being defensively solid, having a good shape and then trying to go for the win. You could feel it in the stadium in the second-half that we were the team going for it. We were pushing hard but the opposition don’t roll over and let it happen so you have to respect them and I don’t think a point against Chesterfield is ever like a disgrace.”
Jackson said he made some ‘little tweaks’ at half-time with his team desperately needing a win to keep in touch with the top three.
He added: “We tried to be a little more on the front-foot. We tweaked how we press, we tried to meet them a little bit more higher up because they were causing us some issues in the early part of the game with (Tom) Naylor’s position not something that we have seen them do too much. We had to adjust to that and I thought we did that much better in the second-half.”
