Williamson wants to minimise MK Dons' mood swings next season

MK Dons’ consistent inconsistencies were their biggest downfall last season according to Mike Williamson.

The head coach oversaw big wins and indeed equally big defeats too, not least in their historically bad play-off loss to Crawley Town, putting paid to their promotion chances.

While the team had a habit of bouncing back from defeats with victories, doing so nine times since Williamson took over in October, the former Gateshead chief said they left themselves too much to do in the second leg, needing to overcome a 3-0 deficit, and that chasing the game ultimately left them exposed.

“We were victims of our own success,” he said. “When we won, we won convincingly, but when we lost, we lost convincingly. We tried to minimise that, but obviously it was a bigger gap than we anticipated and it was fully exposed in the biggest game of the season. That made it hard to process.

“Football has taught me you have to learn and you have to learn quickly. There is no break, but we're in straight away looking at how and why it went wrong.”

The head coach went on to admit his side were no match for Crawley, who went on to secure promotion to League One with a 2-0 win over Crewe in the play-off final on Sunday, but feels Dons’ season on the whole should be thought of as a good one.

He said: “I won't make excuses, we weren’t good enough in any area of the games. It was a really hard defeat to take, but I look at where we were when we came in.

“That first game at Accrington, even though we'd lost, but there were so many positives. You could slowly see the style and identity coming through. Then we had some incredible games, comebacks, and the boys loved it and ran with it. We tried to get as much as we could out of it. We always feel the harder you work, the more you'll get out of it.

“I've got no doubt that will make us stronger.”