Wimbledon midfielder Trotter: We are feeling the pressure
BY MAX HALL
Liam Trotter has admitted the AFC Wimbledon players are feeling the pressure after Saturday’s 2-0 loss to Luton.
The Dons’ sixth defeat on the spin left them second from bottom and three points from League One safety.
“You can feel the tension today [Saturday] around the stadium,” said Trotter on Saturday. “Everyone feels tension.
“We’re not getting carried away, I don’t think anyone should be getting too concerned, in terms of our position right now because if win two or three games it can change a lot. It can change our perspective and it’s still a long season with a lot of games to go, so we can’t look too much into that.
“But there’ll always be tension, [it will] always be tough and confidence will be low when you’re on a run like this, because that’s football.
“We’re human beings – the fans are human beings, the staff are human beings, everybody feels pressure and tension, it’s just [about] how you deal with it, and that’s what we’re paid to do.”
With Neal Ardley absent from the post-match media duties, first-team coach Simon Bassey said the Wimbledon manager felt let down by his players after a limp second-half display, and even suggested some of the squad were not fit to wear the shirt.
“He [Ardley] was disappointed with our second half, like we all were,” said former Millwall man Trotter. “The only thing he asks of us is that we give it a good go, and I think the players feel like they did.
“I don’t think the players feel like they weren’t trying [but] sometimes it’s more than just running around, sometimes you’ve got to play more with your head and we definitely didn’t do that, second half.
“Sometimes we were too tentative in terms of the fact that everyone was trying hard to do their jobs and working hard off the ball and doing their running, but we lacked a lot of composure on the ball, we lacked a lot of footballing nous, we kind of played into their hands a little bit, [for] a lot of the game.”
Asked which parts of the team are malfunctioning, Trotter said: “I don’t think there’s one particular thing, because on Tuesday night at Bristol Rovers we could have been 3-0 up within the first 15 minutes, and we should have been. So that wasn’t about creating chances, that was about not taking the chances we created.
“We need a day when it all comes together.
“There’s no magic answer, there’s no ‘do this and you’ll win a game of football’, you’ve just got to play by margins, play by inches, do what we can, try and cover all bases and it will turn at some point, it just will, it’s football.
“When it does, it will be about maintaining that and heading in the right direction. It will be no good if we win one game and then go on to lose another five, so it’s a case of really turning a corner and building on it.”
IMAGE BY PAUL EDWARDS