Caretaker boss Simon Bassey let his players know what he thought of their performance at half time during AFC Wimbledon’s FA Cup second round tie with FC Halifax Town.

The Dons were fortunate not to be a goal down as Matty Kosylo connected with the post after finding himself one-on-one with John McDonnell following a breakaway.

And Joshua Staunton couldn’t find the target when a goalmouth scramble following a set-piece saw the ball fall kindly to his feet.

But Ben Purrington’s strike shortly before half time, his first since 2014, handed Wimbledon the lead before goals from Anthony Wordsworth and Joe Pigott settled the tie.

READ: FA Cup: Halifax Town 1 AFC Wimbledon - as it happened

The second half showing was a near-complete turnaround from the first 45 minutes, only to be blemished by a Rod McDonald own goal he knew little about.

In a post-match interview with BT Sport’s Matt Smith, Bassey admitted his side failed to do the simple things well in a first 45 minutes where they significantly underperformed.

While he was pleased with the result in the end, he said: “We didn’t compete in the first half anywhere near to what we expected and we were lucky to go in one-nil up, if I’m honest.

READ: Player ratings from AFC Wimbledon's FA Cup win over Halifax Town

“Halifax started brightly and we didn’t respond, and that was disappointing. They [the players] got a few choice words at half time.

“They came out in the second half and I thought we were really good value for it in the end.

“You can’t come away from home and not do the basics well, and I don’t think we did that. We talked about starting well, we didn’t execute our kick-off properly and it summed us up for large parts of the first half.

“We had a bit of luck obviously with the one coming back off the post [Kosylo chance], we get the goal and, ultimately, for a conference team at home to be one down at half time is disappointing for them given the way we started.”