MK Dons manager Liam Manning was at pains to point out, in his pre-match press conference, that Tuesday night’s League One clash with Bristol Rovers is far from a ‘must win’.
But with one of the pre-season promotion favourites currently mired in the relegation zone, with just ten points from a possible 33, it’s certainly one the Dons would like to win.
Another damaging, morale-sapping defeat and a team who finished third in the table last term may be forced to kiss goodbye to their already-dwindling play-off hopes a fortnight before Halloween.
Yes, MK Dons lost their star centre-half Harry Darling (Swansea City) and their top scorer Scott Twine (Burnley). But, even still, this is still a squad who should be, on paper, mid-table at worst.
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“(MK Dons) are really poor. Just a bad League One side at this rate, at the back and going forward,” EFL expert George Elek says on the Not The Top 20 podcast.
“I seem to be saying it every week. Liam Manning; it’s really hard to know what to think when you’ve had a manager who was so impressive for a season. Even though we know they lost key players, I don’t think the squad is ‘relegation bad’. It can’t be.
“The personnel at the back, apart from Darling, hasn’t even changed that much. It feels too early in (Manning’s) tenure for it to have been a case of going stale. So I’m lost for ideas as to what’s going on there.”
As recently as late-August, Sunderland added Manning’s name to their managerial wishlist following the sudden and unexpected departure of Alex Neil to Stoke City (Alan Nixon). It’s not long ago that he was being linked with Premier League-chasing QPR too.
Flash forward to mid-October and, following a run of four defeats in five games, it might be some time before the 37-year-old former West Ham U23 coach again finds himself on the radar of ambitious second-tier clubs.
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