While disappointed to see MK Dons’ unbeaten home record come to an end on Saturday, Paul Tisdale believes there is still plenty to be positive about at Stadium MK.
At the hands of fellow promotion-chasers Colchester United, Tisdale’s side fell to their first home Sky Bet League Two defeat of the campaign and only their third league loss overall in 2018/19 - U’s defender Luke Prosser scoring the only goal in the 1-0 reverse.
Despite the defeat, Tisdale’s side remain second in the Sky Bet League Two table heading into Christmas and are four points clear in the automatic promotion places. Reasons enough for MK Dons to be positive in the eyes of their manager.
“We were disappointed to lose, especially as we hadn’t lost here yet, but I’m philosophical about it,” Tisdale said in his post-match press conference.
“I don’t want to blow too much hot air onto that disappointment. We’ve got another game coming up in a couple of days time and we’re still in a good place in the league.
“I don’t want me being considered to be mistaken for me not being anything less than really disappointed. The balanced view, though, is it’s nearly Christmas and we’re second in the table. We are in a good place, with players to come back from injury - we’ll go again.”
Analysing the match itself, Tisdale said: “I don’t think it was a case of us not playing well, I just thought they did a good job on us. We tried pretty hard and we weren’t below par - they just played really well against us and we weren’t able to find that goal.
“The first thing you think about when you go a goal behind is about making sure you don’t concede another. When you’re pushing and pressing a team that has a one-goal lead you have to make sure you don’t give another one away, which we didn’t. We had one or two opportunities to score but weren’t able to.”
He concluded: “We will have plenty of challenges this year and we didn’t quite succeed in our challenge today. The next challenge is to try and respond in the upcoming games.”
Here’s what else Tisdale had to say in his post-match press conference…
On Colchester United’s goal…
“Having seen it back it’s a well-worked corner so I don’t know how I can be disappointed with the defending.
On the half-time substitutions…
“I don’t think I was proved right or wrong - we didn’t score.”
