THE GAME
Suddenly that recent run of seven league games undefeated seems a long time ago as Rovers slipped to a second successive League Two defeat at the hands of a very good MK Dons side.
Whilst the scoreline may have flattered the visitors, there’s no denying the fact that they were by far the best side on the day and fully deserved their victory.
Darrell Clarke made two changes from the side that lost to Walsall seven days earlier. Brad Young made his home league debut, as he deputised for Luke Westwood who was away on international duty with Northern Ireland, while Clinton Mola came in for Bryant Bilongo.
Young was in the thick of the action from the start and had to move swiftly off his line to prevent Nathaniel Mendez-Laing getting a shot away. However, the keeper was beaten after only eight minutes, by his own skipper!
When Alex Gilbey crossed into the box, from the left, the ball came off of Alfie Kilgour’s shin and flew into the net.
The visitors were first to almost every ball and Rovers simply couldn’t get going and were fortunate not to go in at the break trailing by just the one goal. All they had to show for their efforts was a close range header, from a Jack Sparkes corner, which Ellis Harrison directed straight at goalkeeper Craig MacGillivray.
The second half followed a similar pattern for long spells and neither side seemed able to fashion any goalscoring opportunities, though MK Dons always looked dangerous on the break.
Rovers looked to have strong claims for a penalty, though, when Harrison had his shirt pulled off his back in the area before being dumped, unceremoniously, on the turf. However, referee Scott Oldham wasn’t impressed and awarded nothing.
Kilgour and his defensive partner Kacper Lopata saw shots blocked, but that was as good as it got for Rovers and they conceded three more goals in the final ten minutes of the game.
On 83 minutes a free kick from out on the left took a deflection off of Ruel Sotiriou and fell kindly for Lawrence Maguire who netted from close range. On 90 minutes Rovers defenders stood like statues as Liam Kelly rolled a free kick into the box where Gilbey fired a low shot past Young.
Three minutes into time added on the visitors added a fourth. With Rovers pushing up in search of at least a consolation goal, MK Dons hit them on the counter. Jonathan Leko raced clear and crossed to Rushian Hepburn-Murphy whose first time shot easily beat Young.
WHAT WAS SAID
‘You don’t need me to stand here and say that that’s not good enough. We know that. We’ve got to know that. We’ve got to understand that as a group. We gave really cheap goals away today, and we were
nowhere near it with the ball if I’m honest with you.
‘You either go away and blame things and blame this and that. The fact of the matter is, we’ve been awful today. With that, there has to be a reaction, and you get that by getting back on the grass as quickly as we can, ready to react again.
‘Not a lot to say on it, a performance way below our standards, but I also won’t let it derail the base that we built. These things can happen sometimes at this level. At any level. We have to take our medicine tonight, and then we have to get back to work.’
‘We’re under no illusion about how much work we still need to do as a group. We’ve never shied away from that. It’s a game where we didn’t deserve anything from the game. We got beaten heavily because we’ve conceded really poor goals and not got our play going forward.’ Rovers Head Coach Darrell Clarke
‘I’m really disappointed. I feel like we had a really good week. After the Walsall game we had a really good week in training, and then to concede so early put a dampener on it. I feel like we didn’t really get going today. To be honest, I never felt like it was a 4-0 defeat. Three set pieces, and they caught us on the counter late on. So obviously I’m gutted. It just feels like a real kick in the teeth, but we’ve got to put that aside. We’ve got to go back Monday morning and get things right for next week now.
‘When you concede early on—and after that we had spells where we were on top—we need more from that and control the game a lot better than we did. It doesn’t feel like a 4-0 defeat, but it is at the end of the day. Monday morning, put things right and move on to Tranmere.
‘I feel like our mentality needs to be better. Obviously, they scored quite late on, but when they do go two nil up, we still need to keep going. It can’t be three, four—we’re not a team like that. We haven’t got that mentality. Hopefully, it won’t happen again, and we can just move on now. You can’t dwell on things. There are obviously so many more games to be played, so many more points to play for, so you can’t dwell on anything in this league. You’ve got to put it to bed, look at it Monday morning, analyse what went wrong, and look forward now.’ Rovers midfielder Josh McEachran
MK Dons boss Paul Warne hailed his side’s best away display of the campaign so far following their 4-0 triumph at Bristol Rovers.
‘I wasn’t 100 per cent happy in truth, I thought first half we wasted opportunities and we could have made life easier for ourselves.
‘Once you get the second goal it helps. Once we did and the subs I could make…bringing on Dan (Crowley), Rush (Hepburn-Murphy), Leks (Jonathan Leko), Nath (Nathan Thompson) and Kane (Thompson-Sommers)… I am blessed and that is the joy when people start coming back from injury.
‘We looked stronger on the pitch but we’ve got it off the bench. That was as good an away performance as we’ve had all season. I know how hard it is to play Darrell’s teams. They’re well coached, well motivated, so it’s a really good win. Over the last four or five games they are second or third on form so we knew it would be really difficult. MK Dons Head Coach Paul Warne
