Milton Keynes Dons

Neilson’s men have been impressive at Stadium MK since the turn of the year but weren’t at their best against the Dale and were fortunate to come away from the game with a point to their name.
 
“I’m pleased to take a point but that just wasn’t good enough from us today,” Neilson told MK Dons PlayerHD.
 
“It was poor all over the pitch and that’s not acceptable from us – it’s not how we want to play as a team or a club.
 
“We didn’t stand up to the test. We’ve had two really tough away games recently and we stood up to the battle – today we didn’t.
 
“I think Rochdale should be leaving here disappointed not to get all three points and it shouldn’t be like that."
 
He added: “Hopefully we can get it out of our system and go to AFC (Wimbledon) on Tuesday and put in a real aggressive performance.”
 
Here’s what else Neilson said to MK Dons PlayerHD after Tuesday’s draw...
 
Reasons for the poor performance...
“The intensity wasn’t there. We weren’t at it – we didn’t go and tackle and we didn’t go and press. When we did go and press we were half-hearted. We need to make sure we buck it up because we’re going down to AFC (Wimbledon) on Tuesday and it’s got to be better.”
 
Second-half improvement...
“I had a pop at them at half-time to try and get a reaction from them and I thought we were a little bit better in the second half.”

“We need to continue to build. We’re working hard to build something here and move things forward. We said right at the start that we’d have ups and downs. We’ll have good little periods and we’ll have difficult periods until we can really implement what we want to do.”
Getting back on track...
 
“We take the point but it was a point we didn’t deserve. You have games like this throughout the season and often you don’t take anything from it. Luckily enough we’ve taken a point. The two bits of quality we had in the whole game (led to the goals). Other than that we were slow and predictable – that’s got to get better.”
Taking the point...