Roberto Di Matteo

By Oli
March 11 2009

Dons manager Roberto Di Matteo felt his side deserved more than a point as his side drew 1-1 against Huddersfield Town. Sam Baldock had put the Dons ahead but Michael Flynn's equaliser saw the Dons fall five points behind the promotion spots, although they have three games in hand on second place Peterborough.

It wasn't a Dons side in full swing, but Roberto still felt that his side were unlucky not to come away with all three points.

Roberto: "I thought we deserved again tonight to pick up more than one point, and the team played really well. Our passing, movement was excellent, we created some very good chances against a quite defensive Huddersfield and the only negative side is the result. Everything else, I have to say, I can't blame the players for anything.

Question: "Once again you had to encounter a team that came for a point."

R: "It looked like that. But as I said, we broke them down on a couple of occasions and it was good movement by the team. We just need that little bit of luck - sometimes you hit the post and the ball goes in, or if they get a deflection the ball goes out, instead of in our goal, and it doesn't seem to go our way at the moment."

Q: "Good for Sam Baldock though - he's obviously not scored this year and got on the scoresheet - that will be good for him."

R: "Absolutely - I've said to him in the last couple of weeks, don't worry about it, the goal will come. He's done extremely well this season. When you least think about it, you'll score again.

Q: "Unselfish work from Luke Chadwick, who had a good game."

R: "Yeah, he basically presented a goalscoring occasion for Sam on a silver plate, so it was an easy goal."

Q: "Two minutes earlier he might not have been on the pitch, as he was about to be substituted."

R: "We were thinking about making some changes, maybe that spurred him on."

Q: "The goal was disappointing - they were only really going to score from a set-piece, Anthony Pilkington was pretty good for them - I'm not sure what happened, it looked like it was headed on to Michael Flynn's shoulder - just a bit unfortunate really."

R: "It was half a header, shoulder, deflected by another player, and then the ball just bobbled in. We defended well, but there's nothing you can do about deflections and things like that."

Q: "They only really had one tactic, all up to Andy Booth, and that was really it - Willy Gueret had nothing to do."

R: "I don't think they had a shot. Unfortunately that's football - you're supposed to win and you deserve to win, but then at the end you could even lose the game."

Q: "Right at the end, they could have won it - Shaun Cummings, who made the initial error, somehow got back - are you confident that didn't cross the line?"

R: "The linesman was right on line with the goal, and he seemed quite confident not to give the goal, so I guess it wasn't in. From where I was standing, you couldn't see it. [Shown video replay] On the video as well, you can't see the ball cross the line, but the linesman was on the line, and he didn't give it, so I guess he saw it well."

Roberto was speaking to BBC Three Counties Radio.