Town manager Sam Ricketts reflects on Town’s 1-0 defeat at MK Dons which has ended the high win-streak.
A goalless first half from both teams looked as though Town were on for a well-battled draw against a tough MK Dons side. Town had many chances throughout the first half, from Shaun Whalley, Steve Morison and Ryan Giles.
Dons are a good side and battled for 90 minutes, however, they came out on top with a last-gasp winner from Rhys Healey that looked like it took a slight deflection off former Dons player, Ethan Ebanks-Landell.
The game saw Shaun Whalley start his first game of the 19/20 season after coming off the bench last week after making an impact against Portsmouth.
After the game manager, Sam Ricketts spoke to the press to give his thoughts on the game.
“I think the game was 50/50 if anything, I’ve never really said this before, but I think we were just unlucky”, said Sam.
“It’s just who I thought would’ve suited today’s game better and that was Shaun. He could have won us three penalties and I just thought the game today would have played into Shaun’s favours and strengths.”
“It’s an absolute sucker punch for the players and supporters who came here today.”
Sam was asked how Ro-Shaun Williams was doing after coming off in the first 10 minutes.
“We’re just assessing him at the minute, I don’t know myself either. Omar came on, played well and he got a good opportunity.”
Sam said: “We moved the ball better this week than last week, we created more opportunities, the game plan worked superbly well in the area and Whalley could’ve had three penalties today, one when he got hacked down by Russell Martin.
"We work on combinations of play, 1v1’s and it gets wasted on a tackle like that from Russell as I don’t feel like a yellow card was enough. The player knew what he was doing. I’m not trying to change the rules, it’s just frustrating.”
“I think we had a clear penalty in the first half and so do all my players as Shaun was pulled back. In the second half we could’ve had another two penalties as Shaun again, wasn’t offside and didn’t appear to be offside on the camera. Unfortunately, luck went against us today.”
Sam was asked about his players and how they’re feeling after today’s game.
“They’re as devastated as anyone else, it’s a very quiet dressing room and it goes against last week’s euphoria but that’s just football.
"You want to win games and a draw today would have been a decent point. No, we haven’t been played off the pitch today but it could’ve gone either way and it just didn’t go our way.”
Town now face Rotherham on Tuesday Evening.
“We’re back at it straight away, we’re a little bit light on numbers but we’ll get ourselves ready for Tuesday.
"We will go to bed tonight still feeling like this, we will make up tomorrow still feeling like this, but when we wake up on Monday morning our focus will be on the next game against Rotherham.”