Alex Bass has opened up on his loan move to League Two outfit AFC Wimbledon recently. So far, the keeper has kept three clean sheets for the Dons and even played at Stamford Bridge last night in a 2-1 loss in the EFL Cup.
THE LOAN DEAL
"It was quite a slow-burner in the end, to be honest. The situation at Sunderland was that they needed to get a keeper in [before Bass could leave], so I was kind of hanging around a little bit there. It came up, spoke to the goalkeeping coach [Alessandro Barcherini] at Sunderland, and he really wanted me to come down here. He knew of Bayzo [Wimbledon goalkeeping coach Ashley Bayes] quite a lot - I think they went on a course together in the summer and they spoke about me then and things just kept rolling from there."
CLOSER TO HOME
"It was one of the things I thought about a little bit when the move came about. Being from the South Coast, Sunderland is a long way from home where as this is probably an hour-and-a-half max up the A3, so it's a great place to come and I'm really enjoying my football here so far."
ASHLEY BAYES
"He's a great guy. You can see that everywhere you go, he's infectious. His attitude to training is phenomenal, he makes you work really hard and he is just a great guy - he really cares about you on and off the pitch."
GOOD START
"As a goalkeeper, you are judged on the number of clean sheets that you keep and to have the start we have had has been excellent and long may it continue. The boys in front of me have done really well as well, because it's not just me, the whole back four takes pride in keeping clean sheets. If you look at the club, there are something like nine or ten new signings from last season. It's a back line that has not so much been thrown together, but in pre-season there were a few changes and now you look at us and we look really solid. The more we play together, the better we get and the stronger the connections we build. We know each others games now and that's the most important thing. When you build that relationship with people and they know your game inside out and you know theirs, it’s really good for the base of the team to keep us moving forward."
