A furious Karl Robinson criticised his players for their lack of ‘hunger and fight’ in Tuesday night’s 3-1 defeat to Colchester United.
The Dons, who spurned several good chances early on, were never able to recover from two first-half Colchester goals; the second of which was a direct result of a defensive mix-up between Jordan Spence and Ian McLoughlin.
Spence did make up for his error by reducing the deficit soon after half-time but a late Macualey Bonne strike condemned the Dons to a second straight defeat and it was no surprise when, after the game, Robinson refused to hold back in his assessment of the team’s performance.
The 33-year-old Dons boss said: “It’s not acceptable. There was no hunger, fight or determination. There was a lack of understanding and stupid mistakes which were punished. It was shambolic.
“Colchester, to their credit did play really, really well and you’ve got to take your hat off to them but that was as embarrassed as I’ve ever felt standing on the touchline.
“First half, I thought we were okay but other than that there wasn’t one positive that can come out of that. Silly errors, not picking people up on the edge of the box, no communication for the second goal, no communication for the third goal, it’s schoolboy stuff.
“I just want to apologise to the fans that came tonight because they deserve better than that. Our shirt deserves better than that.
“I’ve got to respond in the right way now. I won’t shirk any responsibility but them players have got to come along with me.
“There’s one or two things that we have to do as a team. We have to work harder, we have to grit our teeth, we have to get on the training pitch a little bit more and get back to where we were very, very quickly.”