Neilson won't panic after a poor week

What a difference a week makes in football. After going six games without defeat, Dons have gone three games without even a goal, and just one point from nine, but it's not enough for Robbie Neilson to start panicking.
Robbie NeilsonRobbie Neilson
Robbie Neilson

Huge victories over Northampton Town and Peterborough were the highlights of a great start to 2017 for Dons, but losing to a late Oxford goal, a drab 0-0 away at Bury and a 1-0 home defeat to Fleetwood last week blew the momentum out of Stadium MK with more precision than Storm Doris ever could.

Taking on Shrewsbury this weekend, a team without a defeat in seven, Neilson knows the importance of avoiding defeat to another side desperately trying to scrape away from the bottom four.

But even if his side were to lose on Saturday, Neilson won't be hitting the panic button yet.

"It has been disappointing but that's what you get in this league," he said. "The games come thick and fast, and if you hit a bit of a blip, you can three games without picking up the points you want to. But hopefully we;re through that now.

"The whole season can turn in a week. We were in great form two weeks ago, and we were talking about pushing on, but in the space of seven days, we picked up one point from nine and people are talking about looking over our shoulders at the relegation zone. We've gone 180, but my job is to be consistent and go up the way.

"We've got a good squad, we can score goals, we've had a lot of possession, we might not have been clinical enough in some games, but the club is moving forwards. I'm not interested in looking over the shoulders.

"Your trajectory isn't always going to go upwards, there will always be little blips. It's important we're still progressing the way we want to. There will always be one or two steps back, but you have to continue to look to the long term."

After calling for his side to be more aggressive after the 1-0 defeat to Fleetwood last Saturday, Neilson has urged his side to gamble a bit more and not to worry about scoring the perfect goal.

He said: "I felt we've been a bit too safe in our play, and it's something we've spoken about.

"It's important to put teams under pressure and in general, you only score goals if you get the ball in the box and there are players in there to score it. When these opportunities come along, we can't afford to wait for it to be the perfect opportunity, but take a percentage change."

Click here for the latest Dons results, fixtures and stats>>> Like us on Facebook to get all the latest MK Dons headlines in your timeline: www.facebook.com/mkcitizensport