If Mike Williamson has his way, the MK Dons might look quite different on opening day of the season. He is expecting a major shake-up at Stadium MK this summer.
The club announced on Friday that six loan players—Jack Payne, Anthony Stewart, Lewis Bate, Filip Marschall, Kyran Lofthouse, and Emre Tezgel—as well as five players—Warren O’Hora, Ethan Robson, Dan Kemp, Mo Eisa, and Michael Kelly—would return to their parent clubs at the conclusion of their contracts.
Given that most of those regulars appear for the Dons in the second half of the season, Sporting Director Liam Sweeting and his staff have a difficult task ahead of them in assembling a team that aligns with Williamson’s philosophy.
It’s a new chapter for us,” the head coach remarked. “First and foremost, we need to make sure that we hire the appropriate players for our upcoming roster. Because we know we have to get it properly, we work every day—possibly longer than we do on the training ground.
We are aware of how crucial hiring new employees is given the abundance of players and chances available. The recruitment team is almost living here, and I don’t think they’ve left since that play-off game. They work tirelessly, and that is what they do.
Above all, Williamson wants to assemble a club that can withstand increased pressure. He acknowledged that his team gave up at the first setback far too often and disintegrated under duress, a characteristic that has been present in many of the squad’s iterations in recent years.
After battling their way into fourth place, the head coach believes that the summer will be crucial to further ingraining his style of play and thinking to make the Dons a more cohesive team.
“We have an opportunity to build now, off last season,” he stated. We know where to focus and how to spend our days in the pre-season building resilience. There will be a lot of things that we do change, but there will also be a lot of things that we don’t. It’s an exciting potential when we get that right, but we have to get better at suffering.
Williamson went on, “That’s as clear as it gets—we have to be better out of possession. When we didn’t have the ball, didn’t suffer, and didn’t respond appropriately to setbacks, we knew we weren’t good enough. And that’s where we need to concentrate right now.
“In order to stay the same when things don’t go our way, we need to surround ourselves with the right people and hire the right characters, coaches.” Like everyone else, I can’t wait for the upcoming season.
