AFC Wimbledon’s winless run in League One stretched to nine games after Jayden Wareham’s header earned relegation-threatened Exeter a controversial 1-0 win at Plough Lane on Monday.
Dons boss Johnnie Jackson felt an injury to Aron Sasu affected the hosts after he was forced off in the 29th minute with Marcus Browne coming on.
Wareham headed Ilmari Niskanen’s cross past goalkeeper Nathan Bishop into the bottom-right corner to score his seventh league goal of the season in the 37th minute.
The Dons thought they had equalised in the 66th minute when Omar Bugiel had the ball in the back of the net after a goalmouth scramble, only for referee Jacob Miles to rule it out after deciding after Exeter defender Luca Woodhouse had been pushed by Bugiel just before the forward nodded home.
Jackson said “there is no foul” after watching it back and he also felt the Dons should have been given a penalty later on.
Browne fired over in stoppage-time before Bishop produced a good save to deny Jack McMillan with one of the last actions of the game.
Wimbledon have gone from the play-off places to seventeenth, just two points above the relegation zone, after going without a league win since October.
“I think the Aron Sasu injury made us lose our flow,” Jackson said. “From that point onwards they took over and definitely finished the half on top and scored in that moment, which, in my opinion, we should defend much better.
“In the second half, we changed it a little bit, chased the game, it was pretty much one-way traffic second half. We scored a perfectly good goal and I purposely waited to watch the incidents back before I spoke about them, because you don’t want to come out here and just rant and rave about it.
“There is no foul. We had a good header on the back post and then their player collides with his own goalkeeper. Omar heads it in and he penalises Omar for a push.
“So, it should be a goal, that should be one-all. And then Omar gets dragged down, gets the wrong side of the defender, the defender pulls him down in the box – penalty, the officials don’t give it. So that’s inexplicable.
We’re on a tough run. We didn’t get that little bit of luck that we needed tonight as well. So we have to just keep working, sticking together now. We knew it would be like this at times this season, but this is the realities of where we are. There’s another game soon, we can’t feel sorry for ourselves.”
The Dons haven’t scored in six of their last nine games, netting just five in that run.
Jackson added: “We had control, we got into good areas, but we need something to show for those periods. We’re having them in every game. At the minute, we’re not getting the win or we’re coming out the wrong side of a one-goal deficit.
“So we need to change that. We can only do it by training, practising, working hard on the training pitch and making sure that we keep getting into those situations and keep asking questions. I think it will definitely turn.
“I think we created chaos in the second half. We committed bodies to the box. That’s how we scored the goal that wasn’t given.
“Our deliveries into the box can be better. We’ve said that probably in the last two or three games now. We’ve had a few opportunities to get shots off on goal. We haven’t maybe hit the target or worked the keeper. We’re getting there, but we’re not doing that last little bit at the minute.”
