Neal Ardley has admitted AFC Wimbledon have a long way to go if they are to compete at the top end of League Two.

The Dons recorded back-to-back defeats on Saturday going down 5-2 at home to Morecambe, leaving them 16th in the table and six points off the play-off places.

Ardley's men took the lead after three minutes courtesy of Andy Barcham, before a quick-fire Shaun Miller brace turned the game on its head, before Alan Goodall ended the game as a contest before half-time.

The Dons attempted to come back and Adebayo Akinfenwa's strike halved the lead earlier in the second half, but Tom Barkhuizen scored the fourth before setting up Paul Mullin to seal it.

It marked a miserable week for Ardley, who celebrated his third year in charge of the club two weeks ago.

He said: “I’m delighted to be here after three years as we all know how harsh the football manager industry can be at times, but I’m not delighted about these past couple of weeks.

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“Come the end of the season I want to bring something different to the table, and that something different has to be action at the right end of the table, and at the moment we have a long way to go."

He added: “We haven’t lost two games on the trot this season and now we have, which is a bad sign of course.

"We really let ourselves down which is the first time this season which is very disappointing. We got punished for everything from the silly penalty to the goal on half-time.

“We had a bad day, I won’t dress it up as anything else, but I will say that we don’t have them often.

"We need to show some character now and get some real positive results in our next two matches and prove we can really compete in this division”