Mark Jackson says MK Dons are fighting for their lives after defeat at Port Vale

Posted Sunday, March 05, 2023 by PA

MK Dons boss Mark Jackson admitted his side are fighting for their lives after going a sixth game without a win following a 1-0 defeat at Port Vale.

Nottingham Forest’s teenage loanee Aaron Donnelly scored the only goal of the contest as his first strike for the club did the damage at Vale Park.

Jackson’s relegation-threatened side are four points adrift of safety, with the four teams above them all having games in hand.

He said: “I’ve said to the boys, ‘we’re under pressure’ and of course we have to win games.

“We’re under no illusion that we need to win games and on Saturday we have to do that.

“We have to learn how to start games better and get a grip in games instead of falling 1-0 behind. I don’t think we showed anywhere near our potential today, nowhere near, and that’s disappointing.

“We have to start winning. There’s no more hiding.

”All those supporters and followers who come to our away games to get behind us, they deserve better than that and we have to do better than that.

“I want to say thank you to the fans for their support. We had the Major in there and they’re frustrated as well with that performance and rightly so.

“We need to fix it, we need to put it right. I’m going to be working and doing everything I can to ensure that we turn this around and achieve our goal to start winning games.”

It was a welcome return to home comforts after back-to-back away defeats for Darrell Clarke’s charges.

But Clarke labelled it an “average” performance despite earning a welcome three points after just one win in 10.

“For me it was an average performance,” admitted Clarke.

“I thought we deserved to win the game and we were the better team.

“Their keeper pulled off two excellent saves in the second half.

“Compared to the last two performances where we got beat, that wasn’t near the standard of the last two.

“It’s a strange old game football. The boys performed averagely and deserved to win.

“You have to win games any way they come, that’s football.

“I don’t think like we were hanging on at all, getting a second would have made it a comfortable afternoon.

“The game’s about winning and we’ve done that.

“We’ve defended quite strongly, with the ball we were average but we’ll take that because in the last two we picked up no points with two good performances.

“The performances have been good, this is the worst of the recent performances.

“We got the three points, it’s 1-0 at home. When we win at home it’s always 1-0, we take the positives.”