The MK Dons head coach spoke after the 1-1 draw on the final day, missing out on the League Two title

Paul Warne was philosophical after MK Dons missed out on lifting the League Two trophy on Saturday after a 1-1 draw with Fleetwood Town.

Knowing a win would secure them the title, Dons were held by the Cod Army at Highbury Stadium after Callum Paterson’s 16th goal of the season cancelled out Ronan Coughlan’s acrobatic opener for the hosts. But with Bromley’s 3-1 win over Walsall in London, the Ravens claimed the crown on the final day.

After securing automatic promotion a week prior though, Warne said the season on the whole was a good one, even if they came up just shy of title.

“I won’t cry about it, I’m proud of what we’ve achieved,” said Warne. “It would have been a lovely cherry on the top of a beautiful cake. And it’s still a beautiful cake, and I’ll still gain weight eating it. But we won’t cry about it. The lads, once it all settles down, will be proud of what they’ve achieved.

“If the football gods don’t want it, they don’t want it. We prepared as best we could, and it just looked like a game too far. We looked a bit tired. In isolation, a point away at Fleetwood is quite a good result I suppose, but obviously we come to get all three. It’s hard to win when you absolutely have to, and today, we just weren’t good enough to win.

“We threw everything we could at it, we went 4-3-3, we had four strikers on the pitch but we needed that last goal. It just wasn’t our day.”

Speaking about the game, he continued: “Fleetwood have a young, youthful side who didn’t want us to win the title here. He’s got them well organised and they kept trying to get in behind, it was dry and hot here and their front two caused our back three a few problems to be honest.

“I think we started the game well, but we came off it. We didn’t really want to throw it in the box, didn’t really want to cross it, we overcomplicated it. We made our changes but we just didn’t create enough chances to win it.

“Even when they scored, I felt we had enough to go and score two. We had loads of half-chances second-half which should have materialised into proper chances, it just didn’t happen. I’ve got no real criticisms, we just weren’t good enough in the final third.”