Dons should be setting their sights on the very top next season

Lee Nicholls has set the bar high for MK Dons this season, believing the club should ‘go for it all’ in League One.

After avoiding relegation straight back to League Two and finishing 19th, many would be forgiven for accepting a solid midtable ambition for the club in 2020/21.

But the keeper believes Dons proved under Russell Martin that they are more than capable of upsetting the apple cart, and says the sky is the limit for their ambitions next season.

“I think we should be going for it all,” he predicted. “There won’t be many team out there with as much quality as us, but we can’t look that far ahead yet.

“We’ll take it game-by-game, aim for three points in the first one and I’m sure at the end of the season, if we have that attitude we’ll be ok.

“It took two or three weeks for us to play the way Russ wanted to, and from then on, we improved every game.

“With Russ, if he gets a good pre-season in us, we get his patterns of play and we’ll be a really force on the pitch.

“The quality we have in the squad is definitely not fitting of 19th, we underachieved last season and everyone will agree with me.

“But we showed towards the end of the season what we can do, and we have to bring that into the new season.”

And that high bar that Nicholls has for the season is matched by the manager, entering his first full season in charge.

Martin said the season is not just huge for Dons, but also for him as a manager too.

He said: “The guys have set themselves a really high bar from last season.

“If you look at our results against teams in the top seven, we had really good ones especially at home.

“We’ll be looked at differently next season to when we first took over, so that will bring different challenges.”

“It’s a really important season for me. Last season was cut in half for us as a team, but it’s hugely important.

“Everything we do has to have a purpose, I don’t want to waste any time, we know what we want to achieve and that’s to improve and progress from last season.”