AFC Wimbledon boss Neal Ardley admitted that even after doing their homework on Steven Gerrard, they could not prevent the Liverpool captain from sending them out of The FA Cup.
Gerrard scored twice at Kingsmeadow, either side of Ade Akinfenwa’s equaliser, to end the League Two outfit’s dreams and secure the Reds a Fourth Round home tie with Bolton Wanderers.
AFC Wimbledon 1-2 Liverpool
FA Cup Third Round
Kingsmeadow
Monday 5 January 2015
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And former Dons midfielder Ardley said the free-kick winner from Gerrard, who is set to leave Liverpool at the end of the season, came as no surprise to him.
He revealed: “We showed the lads some video clips of goals Liverpool concede and goals they score.
“At the end of the ones they create, Gerrard curled a free-kick into the top corner. I actually turned round to Sheasy [goalkeeper James Shea] and said ‘be ready for that one!’.
“And today he’s done exactly what happened on the video.”
Ardley continued: “We didn’t need to give away the foul, they’d defended the box brilliantly all game but it was the one rash moment where they dived in.
“When you give away a foul and you have people like Gerrard around, you start to worry. It proved to be the decisive point in the game. He was different class tonight.”
Adebayo Akinfenwa prods home for AFC Wimbledon
League Two Dons fought bravely for the 90 minutes and were always in with a chance of snatching at least a draw.
Akinfenwa’s first-half strike filled them with confidence, while Sean Rigg, Matt Tubbs and Adebayo Azeez also had chances to score what would have been memorable goals for a side playing in the Third Round for the first time.
But despite their valiant efforts against the seven-time FA Cup winners who currently sit 72 places above them in the League, Ardley said the result leaves him contemplating what might have been.
“I am proud, but I’m also disappointed,” he said. “You’re in this game to win and I thought with a little bit more quality and a little bit of nous we could have come away with a draw. I think the board would have been jumping for joy at that point!
“The headline was written for Gerrard after the week he’s had, but I didn’t want to be a part of that”
Neil Ardley AFC Wimbledon
“But we got outdone by a world-class player in the end. The headline was written for him after the week he’s just had, but I didn’t want to be a part of that.
“The players have done us proud but there’s that element of disappointment in me at the moment.”
He added: “When we go forward we are decent. It’s not easy to mark Akinfenwa and deal with him in and around the box. And Tubbsy is as sharp around the box as they come.
“But although we caused them problems, I thought Liverpool were reasonably resilient and it’s stuff they aren’t used to.
“Today we tried to give them a different challenge and they came through it in the end.”
