Paul Warne has set out what he would consider success and failure this season

Finishing outside of the top six this season would be considered a failure this season for MK Dons.

After spending three years in League Two, Dons finally got over the line last season, missing out on the League Two title by a point to Bromley. Now heading back into the third tier, the message from the club is to make it back-to-back promotions.

Paul Warne is certainly no stranger to getting promoted from the division, having done so four times during his career - three with Rotherham and another with Derby County - and he has made no bones about his ambitions for the team this season.

And given the ambitions ahead of the new campaign, he admitted should his side finish outside of the play-off spots in May, he would consider the season a failure.

“The minimum would be top six,” he said. “I think if we finished outside of that, I would regard that as a failure. If we finish seventh, and someone asked me if I thought season season was a failure, I’d say it was, something must’ve gone catastrophically wrong.

“You’ve got to be very lucky to be in the top six: you need to be consistent, injury-free, you need to keep the group together, there are a lot of things that need to go right, but if we do that, we should be competing.

“If we’re not, I’ve not done what I set out to do, nor has the club and we come up short.”

He continued: “I’d like to get promoted. I’ve never attacked as season and not had that as my ambition, except in the Championship. Every time I’ve been in League One or League Two, we’ve set out to be promoted. We’ve got a good team, we do a lot of good things and we have the potential to be in the top six.

“I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t want to be in the top two, but so would every other manager.”