The MK Dons boss looked ahead to this evening’s Jersey Mike’s Subs Trophy game with Bromley

There might be a bit more to MK Dons’ trip to Bromley tonight than just a dead rubber Jersey Mike’s Subs Trophy tie.

Paul Warne’s side are through to the next round, thanks to wins over Crawley Town and Brentford U21s, while Bromley sit bottom of Southern Group H with no points to their name, meaning they cannot make it through.

But both sides will have subplots to work on. For Dons, a handful of first-team players will make the trip to Kent to shake off any rustiness having not featured as much for the side in recent weeks. For Bromley, meanwhile, new boss and familiar face Karl Robinson will be keen to see more of his players after taking over at Hayes Lane last week.

Robinson, who spent six-and-a-half years in charge at Stadium MK from 2010-2016, took his first game in charge against Rotherham in the FA Cup on Saturday, but saw the League Two side beat the League Two champions 2-0.

Still very new to the job, Robinson has a couple of choices at his disposal heading into the game against his old club, according to Warne.

He said: “If it was me, I’d be using both of these cup games to get my eyes on as many of the players as I can and form my own opinions. Karl will definitely coach the team differently to the last manager there.

“It’s a good opportunity for him, unless he thinks the team that played against Rotherham on Saturday was his strongest, then he might want to take another look at them and keep tweaking.

“But respectfully it’s about what we do, how we prepare. We can’t predict what Karl does, so we’ll just approach it like we do with any other game.”

Speaking about his own options heading into the ground, Warne admitted there are several fringe players he intends to give game-time to, while bulking the side out with players from the academy.

He continued: “I’ll train most of the recent starters on Tuesday and I won’t take them with me. I’ll use the pros and lean heavily on the academy to support it and back it up. That’s our intention, but also the joy in the cup games. There was some rustiness with some of the substitutes we had on Saturday so a proper run-out will do some people some good.

“We should put out a decent team, which could include Nels, Wilesy, Pato, Ibs, Jay, Dan Barlaser, it’s a strong squad. We’ve got some good kids from U21s training with us quite a lot recently too so there’s a real opportunity for them as well.”