More positive signs for Tisdale after Ipswich defeat

In the first pre-season friendly back at Stadium MK, Freddie Sears' second half penalty was the difference as a defensive mix-up between Callum Brittain and Lee Nicholls saw George Williams bring down Ellis Harrison for the spot kick.

After defeats to Brackley Town and Jumilla so far this pre-season, Tisdale is keen to look beyond the results though, and felt there were highlights to take from the defeat to Ipswich.

"I think it was a credible evening, playing against a team in the Championship," he said. "I'm disappointed with the goal - these things happen, but things would have looked a lot more credible if it stayed 0-0.

"We'd like to have won, and score goals, but we're asking them to do different things. We had two or three instructions at different stages to see how they reacted. So I'm still learning. One or two I felt played really well, but we have to improve the route to goal - that's the thing we have to spend a bit more time on.

"Alex Gilbey coming back to play 45 minutes is ahead of schedule, I keep having to pinch myself. From what I was told a month ago, it's really good and a big plus for everyone.

"Jordan Moore-Taylor really stood out as a strong contender today and we had some good bright performances from off the bench.

"Liam Sole looked lively, and the young back four for the last 15 minutes had a difficult task but they did really well."

His different instructions came with a multitude of players on the field again, with Tisdale making use of 23 players during the 90 minutes. But with the level of chance, the manager admitted he is still discovering how to get the best out of his players.

He said: "It's about getting the best out of the players and trying to establish something which highlights our strengths and hides our weaknesses. In time, I'd like to keep it as straight forward as possible. I'd like to establish some clarity with how we play.

"We've got some time, we've got some highly competitive games early in the league campaign, so I have to be balanced. We have to defend well as well as attack, and marry those up pretty quickly. But it was a decent start today."