Tennai Watson and Tom Soares are both in contention for a starting spot ahead of Wimbledon’s trip to Burton Albion on Saturday.

News that Soares has overcome a hamstring strain and Watson is available after being rested will be welcome following three successive home defeats to Walsall, Sunderland and West Ham.

The busy early season schedule coupled with injuries has meant the Dons have had to call upon inexperienced players and first team coach Simon Bassey says they have proved their worth in the squad.

“I think we could all be very proud with the performances that they put in,” said Bassey.

“We are a young team and the manager has shown that he has no fear of giving young players a chance.

“To have three from our own academy in the finishing 11 the other night [against West Ham] was a real credit to everyone.”

Bassey echoes the opinions of many in that their performances have not received the results they have deserved, and that their league position, 15th, is not a true reflection of what they offer at the Cherry Red Records stadium.

“We feel we have assembled a good squad, a good team, and our performances have been excellent in large spells of the season so far.

“If a couple of decisions had been different we could certainly be sitting here with 10 points.

“We all want to play well, but we know we’re here to pick results up and we are concentrating on doing that.”

The club’s top scorer Joe Pigott reflected on the 3-1 defeat by West Ham where they were forced to play over an hour a man short and insisted they should be confident going into the coming fixtures against Burton, Charlton, and Gillingham.

“We may have lost the last three games but we can take positives from every single one of those.

“We can take great credit with how we performed, even with 10 men we performed really well and hopefully we can take that defensive performance into the next few games.”