Crawley defeat a ‘bump in the road’ for Dons boss Alexander

Graham Alexander hopes MK Dons’ first league defeat of the season is nothing more than a bump in the road after his side went down 2-1 to Crawley Town on Tuesday night.

In the most disappointing performance since the head coach took over, Dons were overrun by a rampant Crawley side, with Nick Tsaroulla opening the scoring after 16 minutes.

Mo Eisa scored against the run of play 11 minutes later and it sparked Dons into life, but Danilo Orsi netted early in the second-half to secure the points as Dons barely threatened.

“There will be bumps and bends along the way,” Alexander said afterwards. “You don't want them but you know they'll come along at some point.

“The result is the biggest disappointment - we got beat and we didn't want to. But I don't think we did enough to win the game. There were moments at both ends of the pitch where we could have changed the momentum and the outcome.

“I don't think we played with the same intensity that weve had in the previous two or three games. You have to give Crawley credit - they have started the season really well, and you can see that in the results. But I'm talking about my team and what we can do better.

“I knew we had to improve after Tranmere, and after Wrexham too. There are things we have to get better at and that's ongoing. We have to make sure one result though doesn't puncture what we've done so far.”