MK Dons Head Coach Scott Lindsey was happy to see his side win but admitted he found his side’s game against Accrington Stanley difficult to watch and looked to see his side improve.

Lindsey spoke after a 2-1 win over Accrington Stanley at Stadium MK, in which goals from Alex Gilbey and Joe Tomlinson did the job for the home side.

Afterwards, Lindsey said that while he was happy MK Dons achieved their base goal of picking up back-to-back league wins for the first time since March, he found the game difficult to watch.

He said, “The pleasing thing for me is that I asked the players to win back-to-back games. It was 32 weeks since we’d done that back in March, so it was important we put that right and we did tonight. But I’ve got to be honest with you, I didn’t enjoy the game one bit. I enjoyed a bit of character and I think we showed that, but I didn’t enjoy the game. I don’t think we played particularly well or controlled the game. It became a bit of a scrap and a mess, but we bumbled over the line. It is what it is.”

Lindsey said that the ideal scenario would’ve seen the team wrap things up when they moved into a 2-0 lead, only for a goal back for the visitors to lead to some hesitation.

He said, “We were only 2-0 up for nine minutes. If we’d have continued being 2-0 up for the rest of the game, we’d have dominated the end of the game but we get done down our left-hand side too easy and a cross in the box leaves him free. We’re not man-to-man or marking in the box. So we have to do that better and focus. It’s important we keep focusing all the way to the end of the game. When you go 2-0 up, you just need to rest, control and dominate, which we was, but we have to then defend moments and we didn’t defend it well enough. Then for the last 20 minutes, it’s out of control and not enjoyable to watch or play in.”

Lindsey also said he felt the team’s first half display lacked something, despite Gilbey giving his side a first minute lead.

He said, “I’m pleased with the way we started the game but we didn’t play any football in their half, especially in the first half. We try to build our player with possession from the keeper deep but when we got into their half of the pitch, we were a little bit anxious and tried to rush the action. We could’ve controlled more in their half than we did and we spoke about that at half-time and I thought we were more controlled in the second half up until them scoring, then it got out of control.”

Reflecting on his time at MK Dons so far, Lindsey said he felt the team were good learners but that the game demonstrated further work was required to fully figure out how to meet his game plan.

He said, “The players have been class. The players have been brilliant. I think that it’s clear to see that we’re asking different things of them now in pressing, running really hard, defending, pressing high up the pitch and being really controlled with the ball. We’re kind of probably not at the levels we need to be at yet, but the more they play and games we play, the better they’ll get and the quicker it will become apparent they can do it.”