The manager on the MK Dons game
United manager Greg Abbott spoke to us following the disappointing performance at MK Dons on Saturday.
He said: “It’s in games like this where we need everything to go for us. They have quality in their side and if you gift them a goal, then don’t work hard enough to close them down, it can only become difficult.
“We needed that bit of luck on our side but today we have to hold our hands up to being second best. We were disappointing all over in the first half so we addressed that, and we did have our spells after the break. We probably needed one of the chances we made to go in to just lift the group, but I don’t think we can argue with the result.
“We know what we’re up against because we don’t quite have that depth in the squad we need. We’ve been working away at that for some time and it does get frustrating when we can’t quite get things over the line, but that’s the situation we’re in. We deal with it and we keep plugging away until we find the players who will come in and give us more options.
“What we do know is that we’re better than what we’ve shown today. We usually come here and give a really good account of ourselves, but we didn’t get at them and give them enough to think about. We’ll talk about that when we get back in on Monday because we need to be at full throttle in every game we play. We are determined to have a go at making this a successful season again and we can only do that by getting it right when we go over that white line.
“Adam [Collin] held his hand up for the first goal and we accept that. When mistakes come at places like this you tend to get hurt by them, but he has made three or fours saves after that which kept us in with a chance of getting something, so you have to look at it from a balanced view point. We have to eradicate mistakes like that, the whole team knows that, but it’s half the battle if the group is honest enough to own up and take responsibility. Adam knows his strengths and weaknesses and he is working hard to improve on everything he does. He’s a good keeper, he’s shown us that time and time again, and I’m sure he’ll bounce back from it.
“We’re hoping James [Berrett] will be fine. He took a knock and he suffered a little bit of double vision, and I don’t think he could see properly out of his left eye. We don’t like to take risks with things like that but the medical people have looked at him and they’ll tell him what to do over the next few days. Like I say, he should be fine though.”
