Swindon v MK Dons - Tension

The County Ground will be full of tension and nerve-jangling expectation tomorrow afternoon when I turn up for Swindon’s game against MK Dons. Nothing to do with my presence you understand, but with Swindon needing a win to give themselves hope of surviving in League One and MK Dons trying to secure a play-off spot, it’s all to play for.

Swindon notched up their first win in nineteen games against Brentford last weekend and boss Paul Hart will hope that the victory gives his players the self-belief they have clearly been lacking for much of the season.

There’s no doubt in my mind that they have the players they need to get out of this jam, although they will very keen to hear the other results come the final whistle as they probably need a couple of snookers.

But if you take a look at my (very) contrived predictions yesterday, you’ll see it’s possible!

If MK Dons were in Swindon’s position I don’t think many football fans would really care. In fact if they went down and AFC Wimbledon went up, that would be the fixture a lot of neutrals would be looking when they are released this summer … with everyone outside of Milton Keynes willing the Wombles on.

But there is no chance of that fantasy coming true for at least another season.

The Dons under Karl Robinson have played well this season and, while you wouldn’t put money on them for automatic promotion with Southampton in pole position, would you bet against any team when the play-offs start?

The Dons squad is a good mixture of youth and experience and they’ve even got a player called Pele on the books – true he’s a 32 year old defender and he has only started one League Cup game for them (a win over Dagenham), but hey, he’s from Portugal and so speaks the lingo!

Sam Baldock leads the Dons goal scoring charts with eleven while midfielders Peter Leven and Daniel Powell have weighed in with eight and nine goals respectively and so the Swindon defence will need to be on their toes.

It’s going to be a very interesting afternoon and the Robins fans will need to get behind their team for the full ninety minutes rather than on their backs as some of them did in the last fixture I saw against Hartlepool.