MK Dons captain Alex Gilbey gave his thoughts after the 1-1 draw with Peterborough United

Skipper Alex Gilbey felt he and MK Dons team-mates have been too soft this season as they drew for a fifth time in six matches on Saturday.

Leading through Aaron Collins’ first-half goal, his fifth of the season, Conn-Clarke’s goal on 85 minutes resigned Dons a 1-1 draw, but one which felt like a loss, according to the captain.

No stranger to late equalisers this season, Dons also conceded late on against Oxford on opening day, while they had to come from behind to get points against both Huddersfield and Wycombe Wanderers.

Ahead in three of the games this season though, Gilbey said the team need to show more grit and backbone to see games over the line.

“We pride ourselves on being resilient and hard to beat and at the moment, we’re a bit soft,” he said. “And that’s not a good thing to say or to hear. Once we start going up through the gears though, we’ll be alright.

“It feels like a defeat. It’s so frustrating, we had a lot of chances we’ve just not got a hold of or worked the goalkeeper. And we’ve sat off them and they’ve scored a goal so late in the game, so it feels like points dropped.

“It’s really frustrating and we can only blame ourselves. We can’t afford to mope though, we’ve got to bounce back.

“In all the games we’ve played, we’ve had chances to win it. We know it has got to be better, up our levels and reach the sorts of levels we showed last season.”

No stranger to Peterborough’s style of play, having worked with boss Luke Williams during his spell at Stadium MK, Gilbey questioned why he and his team-mates allowed the visitors to dictate the play late on in the game, having controlled much of the middle of the encounter after taking the lead.

He said: “We knew what they would do, we know what it’s like to come up against one of Luke’s teams. It took us 10, 15 minutes to get to grips with them but once we stopped following the ball and held our shape, we started to create chances. But we’ve got to do a lot better with those chances. If we do that, everyone goes home happy.

“We’ve been sloppy and shown them too much respect in the last half-an-hour of the game and we’ve been stung.

“We were getting success being in their face, so there was no need for us to drop off. We know what those teams are like, if you put them under pressure you can win turnovers and we were creating chances doing it.”