Karl Robinson admits he was frustrated to learn that his side’s clash with Oldham Athletic had been postponed.
On Monday morning, the Football League ratified Oldham Athletic’s request to delay this weekend’s fixture, due to the Latics having three players away on international duty.
The Dons would have been going into the game on the back of two successive victories and with a chance to reclaim their spot in the play-off places and Robinson, although respectful of the decision taken by Oldham Athletic, was disappointed not to have the chance to build on their recent momentum.
Speaking on Tuesday morning, the 33-year-old said: “It’s frustrating because we’re in good form and we’re winning games. The rules have always been there, though, and it wouldn’t be fair on them to play without three of their players, only because they’ve been doing well.
“We were ready to play but we’ve got to respect where they are and their decision. Lee Johnson’s got to make a decision for his team not my team. It’s the way football is, we’ve just got to move on with it and it looks like we’ll be playing it in the middle of January.
“However, maybe it’s not come at such a bad time for us as we’d have only been without the likes of Samir Carruthers, Lee Hodson, David Martin, Antony Kay, Ben Reeves, Luke Chadwick, Dean Bowditch and Dele Alli.
“It’ll also give the likes of Patrick and Pottsy a chance to rest having played an awful lot of football. I’ve been talking a lot about continuity in the back four and I’d have had to change that again had this game gone ahead so it gives me a chance to get the same back four together again for Bradford City.”
With no League game now for two weeks, Robinson and his coaching staff have been forced to re-arrange the training schedule in order to prepare the players properly for the visit of Bradford City in two weeks time.
Robinson explained: “We’ve rescheduled the training programme so the players will work for four solid days. It’ll almost be like a pre-season with two sessions a day. We’ll then give them Friday, Saturday and Sunday off to recover.
“The staff here have manufactured a wonderful pre-season programme so the players should be back up and running by the time we play Bradford City here next Saturday. We have 14 days until that game so we need to find that competitive edge from somewhere internally to make sure we don’t come off our sharpness.”
Finally, the Dons boss confirmed his side will take part in a behind-closed-doors friendly away at a Premier League side next Tuesday to go alongside the trip to Chesham United in the Berks & Bucks Senior Cup tonight.
“We’ve got a game tonight, where players like Jason and Izale will play because they need to top up their minutes. Izale had cramp on Saturday so we want to try and get that out of him. We’ll also play a behind closed doors game against a Premier League team next Tuesday. We’ll get some of players some minutes there.”
