Before the game against Preston back in March, many of the MK Dons fans would have had that question about whether they were ready for the Championship whirring around in their minds; a lot even thinking ‘yes’ was the answer. But, at full-time, the answer surely would have been a resounding ‘no’. For the people of Milton Keynes, it seemed as though the dream of Championship football was over for another year. They were coming off the back of their longest string of defeats of the season, and with teenage starlet Dele Alli side-lined through injury, it seemed things could not get much worse after the promise shown in previous months.
Are MK Dons Ready for the Championship?
However, results did begin to improve, and by the time they had brushed aside promotion rivals Swindon with a remarkable 3-0, people had started to believe again that the club of controversy could actually do it.
And do it they did. All they had to do was better Preston’s result on the final day, and the youngest club in the football league would be promoted to the Championship. Preston lost, the Dons won, and it was sealed.
Since that day, many fans of current Championship clubs have taken to social media to slate the Dons for what happened back in 2004, and to already confine them to a season of misery and direct relegation back to League One. It would be foolish of any MK Dons fan to completely turn what has been said and predict a title-winning finish, or even a play-off challenge, but are other fans correct to write them off so early?
During their League One season, the majority of the goals were scored by the trio of Will Grigg, Benik Afobe and Dele Alli, all of whom have since left the club. While that might be enough to convince many people that the squad is now not strong enough, look at how Karl Robinson does it.
He brought in Will Grigg on loan from Brentford. He did not really have a place there, but if Brentford’s attackers were to be in a crisis, they still wanted him contracted just in case. But, ultimately, there was no place for him. Furthermore, he only had five goals to his name after 34 games as a Brentford player, so many Dons fans were left wondering why he had come to them. However, fast forward to the end of the season, and you have a player who has had the season of his life with 20 league goals; 22 in all competitions. Fast forward further in to the summer, and Grigg is gone, but Robinson has brought in Welsh international, Simon Church. Church is another player who, like Grigg, does not have great scoring records with previous clubs. After how Robinson transformed Grigg, is it not safe to presume he will do the same with Church?
Other summer signings include Cristian Benavente and Sergio Aguza, both from Real Madrid Castilla; Cody Cropper and Sam Gallagher (loan) from Southampton; former England international Matthew Upson; Dale Jennings from Barnsley; Rob Hall from Bolton (loan; Joe Walsh from previous league rivals, Crawley Town. Quite clearly, they are not names that set the world alight, but, it shows that the Dons are prepared to do something they don’t often do: spend. With that, they have been introduced to a new category of players who hopefully can provide more spark to an already very impressive team.
With those additions, along with the minimal pressure from very low expectations by other league clubs, and also having some genuine quality already within the side, is it really fair to write them off already? They’re entering new ground with no pressure, so who knows what could happen. It looks as though they could be ready.
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