Tucker had ‘negative thoughts’ moments before his goal at Portsmouth

Goalscorer Jack Tucker admitted he did wonder whether Dons’ bad luck of late was about to rear it’s ugly head at Fratton Park again just moments before he struck to make it 2-0.

Conor Grant was through on goal and should have doubled Bradley Johnson’s first-half header on the hour mark, but the Irishman fired his strike at keeper Josh Griffiths. The move ultimately led to a corner though, with Tucker getting the final poke to seal Dons’ control a few moments later.

With Dons going nearly two months without a win in League One, and squandering countless chances last week to see off Fleetwood Town before going on to lose, Tucker admitted Grant’s miss threatened to allow the negative thoughts to creep into his head that it wouldn’t be Dons’ day after all.

He said: “When you're on a run that we're on, you do have negative thoughts when chances like that don't go in, and you sometimes wonder if you will live to regret it like we did last week. But getting the goal straight after relieved that pressure and helped us get over the line.

“I can't really remember what happened! I know me and Woz were scrapping around for it, just trying to kick it in the goal, luckily I got enough on it to beat the keeper.

“It was a good afternoon's work, and it has been a long time coming from our point of view. We've stuck at it, we're disappointed with the way things happened last week and the manager felt the brunt of our bad performances, but we cannot dwell on that.

“We can't affect what has happened in the past, so today gives us something good to build on.”

Sticking to the basics

With just a few days between games this week, caretaker boss Dean Lewington had little time to make huge changes to the way Dons were approaching the two games this week.

From a defensive standpoint, Tucker said it was largely down to positional work and telling the team to stick to the basics to try and stay as structured as possible - a method which paid off at Fratton Park.

He said: “It felt good out there, it was tough as we know it would be coming to Fratton Park and holding onto a lead. I felt solid in our shape, I knew what we were doing and we stuck to it to a man and we got that result.

“When you come to places like this, you just have to do the basics well, stick at it and you saw that today. Things weren't pretty all the time but we managed to get through it relatively comfortably in the end.”

And moving within three points of safety thanks to the win, Tucker added: “It's nice, we're only one game away now. It's nice to get a win to bring us that much closer, and there's still a long way to go, and plenty of points to play for.”