Half-time tweaks bear fruit for Scott Lindsey in MK Dons win at Grimsby

Scott Lindsey’s half-time tweaks were key for MK Dons as they overturned a half-time deficit to win 3-1 at Grimsby.

The Mariners had started stronger and went ahead early through captain Danny Rose, but Lindsey saw what needed to change to alter the course of the game, and those alterations proved vital.

It was a third away win on the bounce for MK, and their manager was delighted with the effort shown to flip the result of the fixture on its head after the break.

“There were spaces in the box where we could score goals, and you could see with the first two in particular that we exploited those spaces, and we finished all three goals really well.

“I felt that we were just getting into our stride when they [Grimsby] scored, so it was a bad time for us to concede. They scored a free-kick when we’ve been pretty good at defending set-pieces. We do a lot of work on it, so we’re disappointed with that.

“We continued to play our way despite that and controlled the latter part of the first half – their defensive line was quite high, and we made some good runs, but we made some small tweaks as I felt we could’ve been a bit smarter with our play.

“We didn’t pass the ball as well in the second as we did in the first, but we were more aggressive with our play and got three goals because of it, so I can’t complain; the effort from the lads was class today.”

Grimsby boss David Artell felt his team lacked the ruthless edge to make more of their early advantage, and mistakes later in the contest proved costly.

He said: “I thought we played better today than we did in the previous two home games and should’ve been out of sight [in the first half], and we had two big chances in the second half even with Luca Barrington and Callum Ainley.

“It’s not as if we haven’t created chances, and we changed shape late on to try and chase the game and get down with a third. I thought that in the first 35 to 40 minutes, we were much the better team and scored a good goal.

“It’s another home loss, but we’ve lost better in a way compared to the last two; however, the most important part is that we still end up with no points. We deserved something from the game, the first two goals were from individual errors, which you can’t legislate for.

“We’ve got to cut those errors out and, as always, be more ruthless going forward.”