Martin was the one positive in a forgettable season for Dons chairman

The 2019/20 campaign is not one that Pete Winkelman will look back on too fondly. With Dons finishing 19th on their return to League One, battling relegation for most of the season and having to sack Paul Tisdale in November, the chairman says the one positive he can take is the hiring of Russell Martin as manager.

Martin took over at the helm when the club dropped into the bottom three and saw his side climb out by New Year's Day, edging themselves away from the drop zone before the coronavirus pandemic curtailed the season in March.

The manager admitted finishing 19th in the standings was not what he had in mind when he took over,and the chairman feels there was only one good thing to have come from the season.

"Last season is definitely a season I want to forget but one amazing thing happened – hiring Russell Martin," he said. "He has delivered everything that I hoped he would.

"We gave him a really hard task. He had to take over a team that was in the relegation zone and had completely lost its confidence, with strikers that still weren’t back. He had to change completely the way that we played, to bring us back to the Milton Keynes Dons identity and our philosophy.

"I think Russell is a serious manager and I’m really excited to see what we can do next year. My task is to make sure that I can get as many as the players on his list as possible to give us the best fighting chance of going back up the table. I’ve got great confidence in him being able to get us back to what MK Dons has been about since Paul Ince in 2007.

"We are a dynamic, football-playing team. We want to be a very entertaining and exciting team to watch. We want to improve our players and increase the value of our players. It’s been great to get back to that.

"Russell is getting back us back to that Milton Keynes Dons way. There is a Milton Keynes Dons way and our supporters know what that looks like and it what it can look like at its best. He wants to get us back to that. It was that belief that made me give him the job after 10 minutes of talking to him. Even in the bad times, there is always some good things to come out."