AFC Wimbledon 2 Gillingham 0: Reaction from Gills boss Neil Harris

Gillingham boss Neil Harris bemoaned the two costly errors that led to his side’s defeat at AFC Wimbledon.

Harris watched his side concede following a corner let in a second after a throw-in, losing 2-0.

Report: Wimbledon 2 Gillingham 0

On the first goal, Harris said: “The set-up wasn’t correct from how we wanted them to line up, we take responsibility as coaching staff for that but you have to trust your players to do their jobs.

“I pride myself as a manager on being very good at the top end of the pitch with set-plays and very good defensively with set-plays but we have conceded two goals from restarts that can’t happen. The players have to understand that we give them roles and responsibilities to do their jobs and they can’t deviate from that or make up their own rules, because at any level of football the ball ends up in the back of the net.

“We got it slightly wrong leading to the boy having a free shot from 20 yards. It was a great strike, fair play, but to me it is avoidable, the second one is really weak.”

Aside from the goals, Harris didn’t see much between the sides, both of whom were relegated from League 1 last season.

He said: “I don’t think there was a lot between the teams, if anything we were the better team, but football matches are about winning games and ultimately we have made two costly errors from restarts, one from a throw-in and one from a corner, and the ball ends up in the back of our net both times.

“I said to the players, worse case that game needs to be 0-0, they are a tough team to break down with a defensive block of five at the back and three sitting infront, at times we got into good positions but we couldn’t punish them, we left the door open twice with poor judgement from senior