MK Dons boss Karl Robinson spoke to his club's official website ahead of his side's League One game against Carlisle at Brunton Park on Tuesday evening, Robinson talking about what the Dons have been up over with the weekend with no match to play:
“It is important we were in on Sunday, we have got an awful lot of football to play. But, it just shows the professionalism of the group, they have come in this morning and they have conducted themselves in a typical way. We know how important Tuesday night is, especially after the result we had last Tuesday. I think obviously our mindset is we are unhappy with what happened, or what has been before, and we want to try to put it right.
“Every day that goes by when we have not had opportunities to train it is an opportunity to get on the grass and do some work. Obviously, the weather doesn’t help but we have just done another 40 or 50 minutes on shape and understanding. Especially with the team so young at the minute it is so important that we got those little elements into the game. It is our job, our passion, our love, and I think the fans would also be upset if we weren’t trying to put things right, and I think days like today show how hard we really want this.
“We are trying everything we possibly can for Tuesday night, we have only had I think 3 wins in our last 22 midweek games or something like that. It is obviously a big difference in promotion and not, and if we can get that right and continue the rest of our performances, I think it is 1.9 to 2 points per game on our Saturday games and that is promotion form. We let ourselves down in evening games, is it the way we travel, is it what we do on a Tuesday, have we got to look at changing things internally?
“We have spoken to another Premier League club to see what they do and we have spoken to other sports scientists, and what they are generally saying is that we are not far off what they would do. Obviously, in the Premier League they have got tremendous finances to fly to games and to go overnight to games and we have not got that. We were speaking the other day, the year we went up I think we stayed in a hotel every away game and had one of the best away records.
“We have to look at that, the chairman [Peter Winkelman] has been brilliant, the chairman has been fully understanding of what we are trying to do and we had an hour on the phone again yesterday after I went to watch Tranmere against Crewe. He understood what we are trying to do and it is good, all the staff were at games and yesterday and trying to recruit players and trying to watch future games. It is a really buzzy time and we can’t let ourselves down on Tuesday by what we do against Carlisle.
““We know how difficult it’s been for Graham Kavanagh. He’s a great guy and I’ve got a lot of time and respect for him. We meet up for a night out every summer on holiday and he’s somebody who I know very well. We speak on the phone on a regular basis. It’s still going to be a very difficult game but hopefully we can try to get the win that hopefully we’ll deserve.
“The recruitment people are coming with us to Carlisle now we’ve lost Shaun Williams and I hope to change a few things at the football club. We’ll have a meeting and try to move things forward. Hopefully we can put something in place. I want to build a team, but I lose players. I lost my leading scorer Sam Baldock a few years ago, I lost Dean Bowditch through injury this season, I lost Ryan Lowe another goal scorer. Things keep falling away.”
Like the home side, the visitors will be a player short in the heart of their defence tomorrow night with centre-half Shaun Williams having today moved to Championship outfit Millwall for an undisclosed fee. Elsewhere in the Dons matchday squad right-back Lee Hodson is 50-50 to be included following a recent knee injury, but midfielder Dele Alli is definitely available despite being substituted with a tight calf in a 2-0 defeat at Crewe last Tuesday evening.
The referee for tomorrow evening's match is David Coote from Winthorpe in Nottinghamshire and he will be assisted down the lines by Thomas Rogers from Darlington and Neil Sharp from Hartlepool. Meanwhile the fourth official is Paul Kettlewell from Lancaster.