JFH: MK improving – we must match up
JIMMY Floyd Hasselbaink says Burton Albion must show MK Dons “no respect” today, even though he believes that they are a better team under new manager Liam Manning than they were under the departed Russell Martin.
Martin took up his first managerial post in England with the Dons when Martin jumped ship for Swansea City just before the season.
Under Martin, the Dons had developed a painstaking possession-based game with mixed results.
But while they still like to dominated possession, Hasselbaink thinks they are also more penetrative now, as a rise to fifth in League One the back of winning their last two league games 4-1 suggests.
“They have become better, they are improving,” said Hasselbaink.
“With Russell Martin, they would take 10 extra passes. Now they are direct when they need to be direct. They don’t really take 12-13 passes to get to the opposition goal if they don’t have to. That makes them more dangerous.
“They have moved on. This manager has taken them a step further. Russell obviously started it and, knowing him, he would have tried to do that as well.
“They are a good team who want to dictate the game from the back to the front. They want to suck you in to get overloads in certain areas.
“They are a very mobile team with a lot of movement. You have to go there and not give them any respect. You can’t.
“You have to play high energy, really match them, really get close to them and take the game to them. I think it will be a really high intensity game, or it should be.”
The Dons’ form is nonetheless a mixed bag. They have won three of their last four, including upsetting Wigan Athletic, but also been beaten by Rotherham United and Shrewsbury Town.
Burton are more inconsistent, though and go into the game having lost their last three in League One. Hasselbaink maintains that confidence, overall, is undented by that record as his side continue to work to improve their game.
“I don’t think that we are lacking in confidence. I just think certain things have happened in the last three games that we have lost,” he insisted.
“Against Oxford, we didn’t play well at all. In the Wigan game we got an early red card, rightly or wrongly, it
doesn’t matter but it was something that we couldn’t really control.
“And then the Charlton game, we both went down to 10 men and I think Deji Oshilaja was more important for us than the player who got sent off was for them.
“In that spell when they scored we were a little bit off it. We should have defended it better.
“Overall, they were sitting back on their 1-0 and we had 70% of the ball and didn’t create enough.
“That is a process we must improve upon but that’s just time. So, we have lost three games in a row – and I would be the first to say we don’t want that – but there was stuff happening that I, or we, couldn’t control.”
Hasselbaink has Tom Hamer back from suspension and Terry Taylor and Daniel Jebbison back from international duty to add to his selection options.
Hamer lost his “ever present” status through his one-match suspension for reaching five bookings and Hasselbaink wants the all-action defender to balance his game a little.
“Tom’s not someone who misses a lot of games but he is someone who plays on the edge and he got five yellow cards,” he said.
“With some, I think he could have done better but i don’t want to take anything away from his competitiveness, which makes him the player that he is.”