Futures of several key MK Dons players will not be discussed until summer

The future of several MK Dons first-team players will be left up for discussion until the end of the season.

More than ten players will be out of contract in the summer - a little under half of Paul Warne’s current outfield squad - potentially leaving a vast hole in the side whichever division Dons end up kicking off in in August.

With the club though scrapping for a potential League One spot, focus on anything other than the current promotion fight is not on Warne’s mind, leaving some players in limbo heading into the final few months of their contracts.

“I don’t look at it until the season ends, I just don’t,” Warne said. “Football management is precarious enough, I do well sometimes to go from one payday to the next, so I don’t start to plan for next season.

“I can’t say that it doesn’t come into my mind. If someone hasn’t played this year, the chances of me giving them an extension are less than zero. But for the contributors, there’s always an opportunity but I won’t address that until there’s a resolution to our season.

“We worked hard in the summer to go from a fifth-from-bottom side to a top three team, and we’ve made massive steps. In my opinion, we should get in the top three but that doesn’t mean we will.

“If it was a consolidation season, it would be easier to plan for, but this isn’t one. We’re going for it. We don’t know how it ends.

“If we stay in this league next season, I look at which players would I keep, would I move on, which would I think have performed well over the course of the season? Similarly if we go up, which ones do I think we could improve on?”

With Dons’ squad already overly full, with at least one senior player set to miss out on being registered for the remainder of the season, tough decisions will need to be made in the summer, with some familiar faces likely to depart.

Warne continued: “Most of the lads take it alright, and they understand it. More often than not, the team that gets a club promoted does not play a lot the following season. It is pretty brutal.

“In most of my promotion seasons, virtually everyone who played 60 per cent and above was there the next season, but the ones who were below that, that’s a different conversation.

“It’s harder the lower you go down. Sometimes you have to tell a player to that I’ve not got an answer for them yet, and to prepare for nothing to be offered here. If they leave with a promotion on their CV and a reference from me, it’s the best I can offer. Everyone wants to sign someone with a promotion.

“I don’t like it, I absolutely detest it. They are people, sons, brothers, dads, husbands. That side of the game is never nice.”