Paul Warne left disappointed MK Dons couldn't break Crawley down

MK Dons Head Coach Paul Warne said he was content with the performance but disappointed not to score as his side drew with Crawley Town.

The Dons created some good chances against a Red Devils side managed by former Dons boss Scott Lindsey, but no way through could be found for the home side, as they drew a blank against the struggling side from Sussex.

Reflecting afterwards, Warne said he was happy with the team’s general play and chance creation but disappointed not to see something beat visiting keeper Jacob Chapman.

He said, “I’m disappointed not to win.

“I thought we played alright tonight and thought we created enough chances to win, put it that way, but, we didn’t take them.

“I liked the lads’ attitude in the warm-ups and meetings and we didn’t turn up tonight thinking it would’ve been a stroll in the park. It definitely didn’t feel like a stroll in the park. I’m disappointed we didn’t win, but I move on quite quickly. We obviously need to score goals, I know that, but I can’t knock anyone’s effort. I didn’t think anyone played particularly poorly and didn’t mind the way we played but its disappointing.

“All in all, I’m reasonably happy with the performance, obviously not happy to not scoring at home, but if you’re not going to win, just don’t lose.

“If they underperformed, I wouldn’t have been happy, but Crawley made it very difficult for us, played well in parts. I thought we defended pretty well but for whatever reason, it wasn’t meant to be.”

One factor was injuries, with Warne revealing the side lost midfielder Jay Matete to a potential hamstring injury in the first half, but also suffered a double blow before the game with the losses of strikers Callum Paterson and Aaron Collins to long-term ankle injuries.

With Nathaniel Mendez-Laing, Will Collar and Jack Sanders among those already absent, it added to a growing injury list and Warne called for others to step up in the face of the injury list.

He said, “There were some good performances but obviously its a blow to lose Pato and Aaron Collins, and we’ve lost Mendez as well. We’ve lost a lot of the goal output from our team. But I thought Rush (Hepburn-Murphy) lead the line really well and was really impressed by him and I was impressed by Scott Hogan when he came on, he’s trained really well recently. They’re going to have to lead the line with assistance from Leks (Jonathan Leko) as well.”

The result saw the Dons pick up 4 points from 2 games against teams fighting against relegation, scoring 1 goal across the pair of games, and Warne reflected after that it demonstrated there were no easy games in the league.

He said, “What it does show is that there is no easy games. When we turned up and played Newport last week, people might turn up thinking its nailed on, but there’s no nailed on. Every single game of professional football is really difficult and teams are going to drop loads of points between now and the end of the season. We’ve just got to try and not drop as many as three above us and we’ve cracked it.”