Wimbledon’s Ryan Johnson discusses bouncing back, on-fire strikers – and wearing the captain’s armband

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AFC WIMBLEDON scored three second-half goals as they moved up to tenth in League Two with their 3-0 win over Morecambe at Plough Lane on Tuesday night. 

James Tilley, Omar Bugiel and Matty Stevens were on target as Johnnie Jackson’s side bounced back from their 1-0 defeat at Notts County at the weekend. 

The hosts were frustrated against the bottom side in the first half as Tilley had an effort saved by goalkeeper Stuart Moore. 

But the Dons got their deserved victory and are two points off the play-offs with two or three games in hand on all the sides above them. 

“Overall, I thought it was a professional performance,” defender Ryan Johnson said on the Dons’ website. “Off the back of a difficult result on Saturday, we wanted to bounce back.

“It’s a cliche to say that, but that’s what winning teams do. If you want to be up there at the end of the season, you need to bounce back and turn a loss into a win and that’s what we did.”

Bugiel’s goal was his fourth of the season, and Stevens’ his seventh. 

Johnson added: “That’s what you want, you want your goals from your strikers. I thought we could have got a few on Saturday at Notts County, we were critical of them because we know how good they are. When chances come we need to be scoring them. Tonight, they did though and I’m buzzing for them.

“It was good to have Joe Lewis back. He’s been training for a few days, and he felt good, he felt strong. You know what you’re going to get from him, and I was happy to have my mate back out there. It was a case of minimising the threats that they had, and I thought we did that really well.

Johnson has been wearing the captain’s armband with Jake Reeves injured. 

“While the skipper is out, I’m there to fill in and I’ll do my role as I have been, on and off the pitch,” Johnson said. “It’s always an honour to wear the armband and I’m just enjoying being back out there. 

“There are tough places to go in this league and we’ve got to grind out the results away from home. We’re a good team, so we should be winning away from home. Hopefully we can improve on that.”

Wimbledon are at Port Vale on Saturday for a 3pm kick-off. 

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