Top half finish must be the aim for MK Dons says O'Keefe

The on-loan Cardiff City midfielder fired a volley into the top corner six minutes into the second half against bottom club City - his second for the club since joining in January - as Dons moved up to 16th in the table.

After the embarrassing 2-0 defeat to AFC Wimbledon last week, and the last minute equaliser against Rochdale before that, O'Keefe said getting back to winning ways was essential, easing the threat in their relegation scrap.

"We came off on Tuesday really gutted and it really hurt us," said the goal-scorer. "But fair play to the boys, we had a good few days training, cleared our heads and got a good result on Saturday.

"Winning breeds confidence. When you lose like we did on Tuesday, and draw before that without a good performance, it did make us feel a bit on edge. We’re good players, and we have to believe that. Hopefully this result will help us kick on now because need to do that now.

"If we can get as many good results as we can, and finish in the top half would be a positive for us now. I do think the play-offs is a bit far, even if it’s not mathematically impossible, but we’ve still got some tough games. We’ll take each game as it comes and we’ll see how it ends.

"With the players we’ve got here, we really should be in the top half at least. Now we go to Port Vale and if we get another positive result, we move even further away from the bottom four, where I don’t think we should be near anyway."

O'Keefe's strike was one worthy of winning the game. Having had the best chance of the game in the first half, his right-footed effort from a half-cleared corner sailed past keeper Lee Burge to secure the victory, and it was a strike he was proud of.

He said: "My goal record isn’t that great! It was nice to see one come off like that, seeing it fly into the corner was very satisfying. I caught one quite sweet in the first half too, but luckily for the keeper it was straight at him – either side of him I think it would have had a chance.

"But it was pleasing to get a good goal, and ultimately the three points to take the pressure off us a little bit.

"We had a lot of the ball and got in some good positions but we didn’t create anything clear-cut, as such. The longer the game went on, the easier it was going to get for Coventry – they haven’t got anything to lose have they. It was a good time to score to really take the pressure off, and our confidence grew."