Neal Ardley rallied to the defence of goalkeeping new boy Ryan Clarke after his howler set AFC Wimbledon on the road to defeat against Bolton yesterday.
Dons were leading with an early Andy Barcham strike when the former Oxford United custodian allowed a scuffed shot from Gary Midane to slip under his body and draw Wanderers level.
The visitors went on to win 2-1 to condemn Dons to back-to-back defeats at the start of their first ever season in League One.
Ardley recruited Clarke in the summer and immediately installed him as his No 1, admitted it wasn’t Clarke’s finest hour, but made clear others too must shoulder responsibility for the goal.
“Their first goal is a poor one from our perspective,” he said.
“We have got three men around the ball and it’s a scuffed shot between somebody’s legs and really we should be keeping that out.
“It is not a great moment for Ryan Clarke and he will be disappointed I’m sure.
“Like I say I’m not going to stand here pointing fingers.
"We work together to try and win games. At the moment I would be more worried if Ryan was having to keep us in games by pulling off saves right, left and centre, but he hasn’t had hardly anything to do in any of the games and we’ve conceded eight goals.”
The 35th minute blunder spoilt what was a much improved defensive effort as Dons afforded Bolton few sights of goal and proved much more solid at set-pieces than in their first two games.
Ardley, though concedes his side can’t afford to keep coming out on the wrong side of tight games, so must cut out these odd errors and get back to the frugal defending which characterized their promotion surge last season.
“We haven’t tweaked anything much on the set pieces,” he added.
“We worked on them yesterday and the boys have done their best to tighten up, be really competitive on the first header and anticipate the second one if it does drop.
“We know we can do it. We have just let ourselves down in a couple of moments.
“We can’t keep saying there wasn’t much in it, but if we can just tidy up a little bit and get those clean sheets back into the team we will be fine.”
