MK Dons boss Scott Lindsey felt his side’s initial performance against Cheltenham wasn’t great but was pleased with impact of changes in a comeback victory.

The Dons fell 2-0 down after 13 minutes against the Robins at Stadium MK, but goals by Alex Gilbey, Ellis Harrison and Laurence Maguire turned the game on it’s head, handing MK Dons a fifth straight league win.

Speaking after the game, Lindsey said he felt there was a lack of quality and speed in their first half work when they fell behind.

He said, “We didn’t play great and showed a real lack of quality at times. I thought first half, we showed a lack of urgency and were so slow in play where goal-kicks and throw-ins took an age. We gave too many free-kicks away then can’t defend the free-kicks properly, which I’ll be putting a lot of detail and work in moving forward because I’m not happy with that.

“I thought we were negative with our play. We had a free-kick in the first half in their half of the pitch, make four backwards passes in it and I just thought we were negative and slow. I didn’t like it in the first half at all.”

This lead to tweaks at the break, with Lindsey making a double substitution at half-time to go with an enforced change after MJ Williams was forced off injured, and Lindsey was happier that the tweaks had an effect.

He said, “I had to make changes. I felt we needed to put players on the pitch with a little more urgency and control. I thought Liam Kelly would give us that and Callum Hendry would give us more of an attacking threat. Joe Tomlinson was struggling a little bit – he has a problem with his heel at the moment and looked like he was struggling so I thought it was only right to make that change. We had runners on the pitch with Alex Gilbey playing wider in the second half and then I had to work really hard to change things, swap things about and use different shapes to get a foothold in the game.”

Victory over Cheltenham was the Dons’ third win in a row in a game where they conceded the first goal, and Lindsey said that the character showed was good but that the team now had to work to tighten up and play more positively.

He said, “We can’t keep doing that because teams at this level of football will punish you. You saw that today. The game could’ve got away from us but it didn’t. But we have to play with a little bit more urgency and a little more forward thinking. I just felt we were negative with our play and I apologise to the fans for kind of watching that as it weren’t a great watch.

“But I do think the character the players showed was brilliant. The dressing room’s really buzzing in there and I’ve just said teams who win titles and promotions win games when not playing well so we’ll take that.”

Lindsey also said he felt confident in his team’s abilities to score during the game, even despite the slow start.

He said, “I think that we kind of looked at them and felt there would be goalscoring opportunities to be presented if we did the right things. In the first half, we were just too slow with the action. I remember there were a couple of times where Scott Hogan ran offside but if we’d been quicker with our decision making to play the ball through, we’d probably have got him in. So we always felt there would be spaces to score and we just kept chipping away.

“We knew we would score today. Even at 2-0 down, I felt there were times we would score. We obviously didn’t want to be 2-0 down, we just found ourself in that position because we didn’t do our jobs on set pieces.”