Neil Wood praises his sides defensive work against AFC Wimbledon

Salford City boss Neil Wood said “it was important for us not to concede goals” after playing out a nil-nil draw against AFC Wimbledon.

Both sides played out a scrappy, uneventful game for large periods with only a handful of chances. Wimbledon controlled the play until the last 20 minutes Salford began to look a threat.

It was Wood who was arguably the happier manager with the point, as they stopped the London side in their tracks after fabulous form had led the Dons into the League Two play-off places.

Following the match, the 40-year-old praised his side’s defensive work, saying: “Building something starts with not losing games, we’ve been doing a lot of work on that over the last couple of months to improve.

It’s not a quick fix, it’s taken three or four months, we wanted to take all three points but we just missed being able to put one of our chances away today.”

Wood also highlighted the difficult task his defenders have had to tackle over the past few weeks, adding: “The strike forces of the teams that we have faced in the past couple of games have been difficult to defend against. They are strong, quick and mobile.

“They can run in behind you and profit, so you can’t switch off against them. We prepared for this before the game. Against Stockport, it was Kyle Wooton, for Wimbledon it was Omar Bugiel and Al-Hamadi.

“These players are willing runners to chase balls and test keepers. They have won a lot of games by doing that.”

Saturday was a quiet day for leading scorer Matt Smith, who was benched at half-time. Wood continued:

“When Smith got cancelled out, we had to try and find a different way of scoring.

“We can’t rely on one person to score all of our goals, we had to move their defenders around. The subs made an impact from half time, they all need to step up”.

Salford’s season has been hampered with injuries thus far, and with the busy Christmas period already in swing it’s important that the side can get their injured players back on the pitch.

“We are a lot closer to getting some of the lads back. There’s a couple back in training, hopefully come the end of the Christmas period we can be back to a full strength side but that only comes with training and playing games.”

Salford travel to Essex to face Colchester United on Friday evening, with kick-off at 7:45pm.