Paul Dickov summed up the draw at MK Franchise FC when he said, “I thought in the second half we could possibly have won it. We rode our luck a bit in the first half. We gave them too much of the ball and showed them too much respect, which isn’t like us. We spoke about them before the game and we knew how they would play. Karl Robinson has got them playing some fantastic football, but we felt we could nullify that with the way we play. Every time they had the ball they seemed to have five yards to run into and that is not like us. We sat off them all over the pitch, especially in midfield. We expect our forwards to help out, as they have done all season, but our two centre-forwards in the first half just wanted to play up against their centre-halves and football doesn’t work like that.”
“We spoke at half-time and sorted it out. But it shouldn’t take us until half-time to do that as they know what to expect from the first minute. In the second half, we were excellent and nullified them completely. Going forward we were a threat all the time. Their goalkeeper pulled off an unbelievable save off Filipe and Sam Mantom was centimetres away.”
Dickov explained that Reuben Hazell was missing from the game due to a stiff back. He also gave the reasons for dropping striker Oumare Tounkara to the bench in favour of Reid and he said, “The big man (Tounkara) has done a lot for us, possibly a bit too much for somebody of his age. We felt that in the last couple of games it has taken its toll on him a little bit. He will benefit from it and in the 15 minutes he got on he looked quite sharp.”