Paul Tisdale insists he will not lose faith in his MK Dons players but knows they must find a way out of their ‘shocking’ form sooner rather than later.
Tisdale’s Dons were beaten 2-0 by Rochdale at the Crown Oil Arena on Tuesday – a defeat which stretches their winless run in Sky Bet League One to seven games and leaves them 19th in the table.
"I’m not very impressed with what we did,” the manager said when reflecting on the loss to Dale in his post-match press conference.
“It’s hard not to be [angry]. It doesn’t help when they score in the first minute. They were catching us on the counter attack and we didn’t have that threat in order to unsettle the opposition. They were having it too easy.
“I’ve got to temper that [anger]. We are where we are, we are in a shocking run but we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We’ve got to find a way out of our malaise.
“I’m certainly not losing faith in the players. I’m angry with what I’ve seen and how it’s manifested itself but I feel for them because they’re hurting.
“It’s certainly not a time for me to critical and show any dissent towards them. If anyone is expecting me to run the players down, I’m not going to do it.
“They’ve tried really hard and put a lot of effort in over the last month. It’s just not working and we’ve got to find a way out of it.”
He added: “We’ve got a really tough game on Saturday, I’m under no illusions on that. All we can do is bring ourselves back to the boil again for the weekend.”
Tisdale also reserved a mention for the 128 MK Dons supporters, who made the journey to the Crown Oil Arena on Tuesday night.
“I want to say thank you to the supporters for following us up here. They can’t be happy and I feel for them. We’re all in this together.”
