FLITCROFT: WE’RE STILL IN THE MIX
THE MESSAGE from Bury manager David Flitcroft after his side had beaten Wimbledon was clear: “It’s still not over.”
Goals from Tom Soares and Ryan Lowe secured the three points for the Shakers, who head into the final day of the season with a chance of automatic promotion. And Flitcroft believes they can still make it.
“It’s still not over,” he said. “I wanted to get the last day.
“The last day in English football is a great day that we all look forward to, from the media, to the fans, to the management.
“Next week, we’ve got a fantastic opportunity to take care of our business. I do believe we can achieve it, but there is one more game to go where we’ve got to be ultra-professional in everything we do.
“For 20 minutes, we were a little bit disjointed, I felt.
“Hallam (Hope) had a decent chance before that, but Popey (Nick Pope) made two brilliant saves to keep us in a clean sheet situation.
“I think, after we scored, we controlled the game and we then had six or seven chances to win the match, which I told them at half-time to do.”
Wimbledon had the better chances in the opening 20 minutes as Pope had to produce two good saves to deny Sean Rigg.
Bury took the lead in the 33rd minute when Tom Soares headed in Chris Hussey’s in-swinging corner for his seventh goal of the season.
Pope was then involved in the action again as he pulled off a magnificent one-handed save to pre- vent Rigg from equalising, before Danny Nardiello struck the post for Bury from Pope’s long goal-kick.
Flitcroft introduced Ryan Lowe into the game in the 58th minute, and he doubled Bury’s lead 18 minutes later.
Soares intercepted a crossfield ball and played in Lowe, who took a few touches to compose himself before slotting past James Shea.
The second goal seemed to kill the game and the Shakers comfortably saw out time to keep their hopes of automatic promotion alive ahead of next Saturday’s game against already-relegated Tranmere.
Wimbledon boss Neal Ardley was left disappointed with the result after his players had created the better chances in the opening period, but he took full responsibility for it.
“Today has been the story of our season,” he said. “The last five or six games have been that way.
“We’ve probably been the better team in most of them but you can come in at half-time and say we’ve been doing well but we’re 1-0 down.
“That sums us up. There are too many vital ingredients missing from the team and that responsibility is down to me. “I’ve got to take the blame f or that.
“We haven’t got enough qualities to take the lead and see games out and that is my fault.”