Dons can still fulfil their pre-season ambitions

Reaching the Championship is not only still a possibility for MK Dons, but would be achieving one of the squad’s pre-season targets.

There was little time to dwell in disappointment, Scott Twine admitted on Saturday after Dons missed out on a top-two spot as Rotherham did the business against Gillingham, with the play-off games against Wycombe Wanderers looming large as a result of the third place finish for Liam Manning’s side.

For Twine, Championship football could be a possibility whether Dons are promoted or not, especially given the attention from other clubs he will have garnered as a result of his growing list of accolades this term (see overleaf).

But for now, playing in the second tier is not on his mind.

“It’s not something I’m focussing on too much to be honest, just looking at Thursday’s game,” he said.

“That’s the end goal though, it’s where we want to be next season so we’ll try our best to be there. It would be massive.”

The same could be said for defender Harry Darling, who received a significant sniff from former boss Russell Martin at Swansea City during the January transfer window.

“That’s where we strive to be,” said Darling of the Championship. “We set targets at the start of the season and one of them was to get promoted. If we can do that, brilliant.

“We just missed out on the last day but it has still been a brilliant season, we can finish strongly now and hopefully we do go up.”