Lewington warns of blips in Dons' recovery

It took five games for Russell Martin to pick up his first win, but the club found their feet and picked up a head of steam to get out of the League One drop zone during December. But the side now have lost three of their last four games in all competitions, with the other a draw against Coventry City. Despite this though, they remain three points clear of Tranmere Rovers, who occupy the final relegation place.

Having taken on three play-off contenders in a week, Dons are without a game this weekend, and face games against Rochdale, Wycombe and Shrewsbury next up.

Lewington said blips are part and parcel of football, but as long as Dons are in and around the relegation battle, they cannot afford to get complacent.

"When you're down there, you're only one result away from looking back over your shoulder," he said. "Results have been excellent recently, and we've managed to pull ourselves three points clear, but we're still fully aware of it. But we can't get complacent, keep doing what we're doing and push up the table.

"There is a good correlation between performances and results recently, there will be blips along the way, as there is for any team, but when we do have those blips, we still have the same template of what we're trying to do."

Russell Martin and Jordan Houghton spoke of the advantages of having a week without a game following the 1-0 defeat to Sunderland on Saturday. For Lewington, it offers Dons an opportunity to work on scenarios they have not fared well against - most notably the game against Burton last week.

He continued: "We've had so many games in quick succession, we've not trained as much as we'd have liked and Tuesday night was the first time in three or four years we've encountered a team who surrendered possession to us. We've not really worked on having 75 per cent possession! It's something we will work on more, and with fixtures easing a bit, we'll be able to train more and polish up on what we need to."