THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

THE CAZBAR BIG GAME PREVIEW – FLEETWOOD TOWN
It’s a job to come up with something new to say about our current predicament, most of it has been said already, but as ever I will try and give you my thoughts….and indeed fears.

The last gasp equaliser against Cheltenham was hard to take and a bitter blow to our survival plan, but Tuesday night just made it a whole lot worse.

I’m sure we all hoped that the Dons would come out on Tuesday and have a right go, but I don’t think many of us expected a performance so flat and so negative. To me we set up not to lose, not to try and win it, we looked scared to shoot, scared to get forward, scared to commit or gamble all except for Leko who wriggled and twisted in an attempt to break Charlton down, it wasn’t his best game, far from it, but you could see he was trying to create something.

Jules was the only other player to show anything, that marauding run down the left escaping challenge after challenge and finally delivering Mo with a cross which he did well to get a shot on target was the highlight of the game for Dons fans, and it all went downhill from there.

We had 12 corners in the game, and I cannot recall one where we beat the first man, each one headed away on the front post. How can that possibly be, these are professional footballers and we can’t get one single delivery in the right place, not one, you couldn’t make it up.

I’ll be honest I left early, Charlton gave us a lesson in how to see out a game, and getting out of the carpark promptly became more appealing as the final minutes ticked by, but, if there had of been evidence of a team fighting for its life, I’d have hung around to the bitter end…..there wasn’t, so I left.

Of course, it’s not all over, there are still 9 points on offer, but we have 3 tricky fixtures left against Fleetwood (A), Barnsley (H), and Burton Albion (A), each one is unpredictable, but there won’t be many tipping us to get anything out of the Barnsley game.

I’ve just about given up second guessing what’s going to happen next, the scenarios are multiple, but it really looks like that last game against Burton Albion is going to be the one that decides our fate, and how long have we been predicting that scenario, but win at Fleetwood and get something out of the Barnsley game no matter how unlikely and the whole picture changes again, all I can say is we will have a clearer picture at 10 to 5 on Saturday.

Whatever happens at the end of the season I’m sure we will all have our opinions, at the moment I’m keeping my powder dry, but one thing I will say is, if we get out of this mess I will allow myself a brief period of celebration, but there it ends, whatever happens, there have been too many mistakes, and the club needs to be held accountable, and it cannot pass unchecked, we cannot just accept its been a bad season and move on to the next.

In the past nine months we have gone from being one game away from Wembley with a decent team, to where we are today, prime candidates all season to get relegated, with a poor team that have lost 22 games, 12 of those at home, won just 4 at home and scoring just 16 goals at SMK.

Off the field we are treated to concession prices in the stadium that are higher than everyone in the football pyramid except West Ham United, and if you want to use the club travel, we pay more than any other club in league 1…. (we haven’t checked the other divisions), and in many cases, significantly more. For this game, our fans can pay as much as £46 to get to Fleetwood using club travel, our near neighbours Northampton Town last week charged their fans £25 to get to Carlisle …..for those not that good at Geography, Carlisle adds on about 150 miles more than our trip, and this isn’t an isolated incident, its every week.

Moving on then, the task in hand, Fleetwood at the Highbury Stadium. Below is the league record of both clubs plus the home record of Fleetwood and the away record of the Dons.

Fleetwood (13th) – P 43, W 13, D 15, L 15, GF 50, GA 47, Pts 54.
MK Dons (19th) – P 43, W 11, D 10, L 22, GF 40, GA 61, Pts 43.
Fleetwood (H) (19th) – P 21, W 6, D 7, L 8, GF 22, GA 23, Pts 25.
MK Dons (A) (13th) – P 21, W 7, D 4, L 10, GF 24, GA 32, Pts 2

The one or two things that strike me about those stats is we have won more games away than they have at home, and we have recorded equal points and they are along with us one of the few teams that appear to be stronger on the road than at home, and that was proved back in March when they went to Pride Park and beat Derby County 2-0.

Their 6 home wins have come against Plymouth Argyle, Accrington Stanley, Morecambe, Cambridge Utd, Peterborough, and Lincoln City, so, a couple of results there raising the eyebrows.

Completing the stats, the 7 draws have been against Derby County, Cheltenham Town, Charlton Athletic, Wycombe Wanderers, Forest Green, Port Vale, and Exeter City, and the 8 defeats at the hands of Shrewsbury Town, Barnsley, Bolton Wanderers, Sheffield Wednesday, Portsmouth, Oxford Utd, Burton Albion, and Bristol Rovers.

Whilst we were embarrassing ourselves on Tuesday night Fleetwood travelled down to already relegated Forest Green and drew 0-0 in front of just 1,716 fans and the only thing of note to happen were accusations that a Forest Green player was racially abused by a small section of Fleetwood fans, the Police and the EFL are investigating.

It’s a job to know what to make of this result, you would have to say the pressure was off Forest Green and probably they played with more freedom, and equally Fleetwood players are virtually on the beach, but we should not forget they destroyed Accrington last weekend, make of that what you will, but it certainly makes you think you never know what you are going to get from Fleetwood.

We last played Fleetwood on December 10th of this season in front of just 5,672 fans and lost 2-1 at SMK where it appeared initially everything was going to plan. The Dons broke the deadlock in the 52nd minute, Tucker nodding a cross into O’Hora’s path to allow him to side foot home. Johnston levelled 18 minutes from time with a stunning curling strike, and then birthday boy Daniel Batty converted in injury time to send the points back to Lancashire, the next day Liam Manning was sacked with the Dons only off the bottom spot courtesy of goal difference.

Carlos Mendes Gomes is the top scorer for Fleetwood with 8 goals but appears to be injured currently, so the threat is likely to come from Jack Marriot who is in a rich vein of form after scoring a hat-trick against Accrington last Saturday, and Jayden Stockley who has been a thorn in our side on several occasions. Whilst Phoenix Patterson, Shaun Rooney, Aristote Nsiala, and Danny Andrew provide the bulk of the assists, it should be noted that Fleetwood can boast 23 different scorers this season.

The man in charge at Fleetwood is Head Coach 37 year old Scott Brown. As a player he represented Scotland in midfield on 55 occasions scoring 4 goals and his domestic career spanned almost 20 years where he played for Celtic, Hibernian and Aberdeen, totting up 787 games scoring 68 goals.

This is Brown’s first venture in the hot seat after taking on the job in May 2022, although he did have a short spell at Aberdeen as a Player Coach. He’s made something of an impression during his almost year tenure by propelling Fleetwood to the 5th Rd of the FA Cup for the first time in their history and then only losing 1-0 at the hands of Burnley, and that after knocking out the likes of QPR and Sheffield Wednesday.

Brown’s record at Fleetwood currently stands at P 54, W 18, D 19, L 17, giving him a Win Ratio of a bang on the money 33.33%.

Our history in this fixture is slightly in our favour with the full record shown below, all games are League 1.

2014/15 – MK Dons 2 Fleetwood 1 (McFadzean, Afobe)
2014/15 – Fleetwood 0 MK Dons 3 (L Baker, Grigg, Alli)
2016/17 – Fleetwood 1 MK Dons 4 (Colclough 3, Bowditch)
2016/17 – MK Dons 0 Fleetwood 1
2017/18 – MK Dons 1 Fleetwood 0 (Aneke)
2017/18 – Fleetwood 1 MK Dons 1 (Muirhead)
2019/20 – Fleetwood 1 MK Dons 0
2020/21 – MK Dons 3 Fleetwood 1 (Mason 3)
2020/21 – Fleetwood 1 MK Dons 1 (Brown)
2021/22 – MK Dons 3 Fleetwood 3 (Twine 3)
2021/22 – Fleetwood 1 MK Dons 1 (Darling)
2022/23 – MK Dons 1 Fleetwood 2 (O’Hora)

TOTAL RECORD – P 12, W 5, D 4, L 3, GF 20, GA 13.

The standout stat in all that is that 3 Dons players have scored hat-tricks previously, Scott Twine, Ryan Colclough, and Joe Mason…. how much do we need that sort of performance from someone on Saturday.

Betting – The bookies have Fleetwood in as narrow favourites and again there is a bit of value whatever your opinion.

Fleetwood 6/4, Draw 12/5, MK Dons 2/1.

Team News – Again not much news to go on, so checkout the Jacko presser ahead of the game, but listening to Wozza on the radio on Tuesday night there seemed to be a suggestion that he could make the most unlikely return after his season was previously written off.

Relegation Watch – Again its going to be an afternoon watching the scores around the country, the games to keep an eye on are listed below.

Barnsley v Oxford Utd
Charlton v Morecambe
Plymouth v Cambridge Utd
Portsmouth v Accrington

Prediction – It probably won’t be enough, but everything about this game screams draw, especially the historical side that has seen this game end 1-1 in 3 out of the last 4 times we have visited the Highbury Stadium.

The game is massive to us, win and a few results fall in our favour, and it could take the pressure off a bit and give us a bit of wriggle room in the remaining two games, lose and you better get with me behind the sofa…. don’t you just hate football. But one thing is for sure, we cannot approach this game with the same mentality as we did against Charlton and to a lesser degree Cheltenham, if we are going down or going to get out of it we need to show the same sort of determination that Jules showed in that buccaneering run on Tuesday.

Surprise, surprise I’m going for a 1-1 nervy game.

Safe Travels if you make the trip.

GM

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Read the MELTDOWN after every game, no bullshit, just giving it straight

The 'disguised optimism' is there hiding in plain sight.
Reported.

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Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

I was hoping it wasn’t that obvious.

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Read the MELTDOWN after every game, no bullshit, just giving it straight

This is the one! I honestly feel anything less than a win here will doom us, not least in terms of fans and player confidence. I see this as the most winnable of our remaining fixtures. I dont see us getting anything against barnsley, and the burton game just leaves us under too much pressure. Fleetwood have nothing left to play for, i know that can often be seen as dangerous but if this team are geunuinely fighting for league one survival then there are no excuses for coming out of this with anything less than 3 points, whatever that takes. Got everyhting crossed and expecting to have no fingernails left come 5pm saturday!

Barnsley are assured a playoff place (almost certainly 4th) and are unlikely to reach autos. Obvs I'm not expecting much but it's a straw to clutch onto that they're going to want to conserve their players for the playoffs. None of them will want to get injured or suspended. I know football doesn't work like that LOL