Holloway on 'surreal' moment MK Dons were denied a penalty against Swindon

Swindon Town boss Ian Holloway admitted he felt his side should have conceded and penalty and had a man sent off during the 0-0 draw with MK Dons on the final day of the season.

Captain Ollie Clarke brought down Dons midfielder Connor Lemonheigh-Evans when through on goal on the edge of the box, if not just inside, but referee Declan Bourne was unmoved despite furious protests on the sideline from head coach Paul Warne.

Holloway, who was in the dugout despite having surgery on a skin cancer growth on his face earlier in the week, said he was shocked not to see the referee give the decision against his side.

“I felt they should have had a penalty,” he admitted afterwards. “Ollie should've been sent off, he rugby tackled the bloke as he went into the box. Wow, he meant to bring him down but it was all quite surreal.”

The game itself, featuring two sides with very little riding on the result, saw just one effort registered on target all afternoon. One of Holloway’s first games in charge of the side came at Stadium MK, and saw them leave MK1 with a 3-1 defeat to their name.

But having lifted the side to a top-half finish by the end, the veteran boss is setting his sights much higher next season.

He continued: “It’s an amazing achievement from the players, and everybody in this ground. What we’ve achieved here is amazing.

“We didn’t have a killer instinct today, but I think that’s because we were safe. But I feel I’ve failed, I wanted to get into the play-offs, so I’ll do everything I can to get to where I think we should be.

“I thought we played quite well. I saw two good sets of players playing some nice football, it’s just a shame it wasn’t what we wanted. We definitely played well enough, we didn’t create enough so it is what it is.

“We definitely played much better than we did last time against them. We got around them, we won it back, we moved it around them but we didn’t quite have that penetration we needed to score.”