Paul Warne admits MK Dons had ‘done enough to win’ against Burton
The Dons scored six goals against Albion, who had 12 players missing at Stadium MK.
Paul Warne was satisfied as his MK Dons side triumphed in a 6-2 win over Burton.
The Dons scored after nine minutes with Dan Crowley’s first-time strike before grabbing a second in the 39th minute as Sam Nombe scored after Corey Addai saved his initial shot.
Jack Sanders made it 3-0 just after half-time when he scored after Charlie Goode’s header was saved.
Emeka Adiele pulled one back with an excellent strike, only for the Dons to take the game away from Burton as a Nombe cross was bundled in by a combination of Callum Paterson, Kegs Chauke and Harvey Araujo.
Nombe scored in the 67th minute via a post and Ben Wiles grabbed the Dons’ sixth with 12 minutes remaining with a fine turn and shot. Burton’s Kain Adom scoring an 81st-minute long-range consolation.
Victory was the Dons’ fifth in six league games, while Burton have just one win in seven matches.
Warne felt his side were not 100 per cent, but was content to take the win.
He said: “We didn’t move the ball quick enough in the first half and I wasn’t overly pleased, though obviously we were 2-0 up and looked ok, but I just felt we had another gear.
“At half-time, I just showed them some clips where we could’ve passed the ball through the lines
quicker.
“Another day the game could’ve taken a different turn, but we’ve done enough to win and that’s all we can do.
“It sounds a bit arrogant, but we’ve got a good team and I said even when we were second bottom that we should be in the top six. I still believe that.
“I do know that if I was a manager of another team and looked at the score, I think they’d look like they’d picked up.”
Gary Bowyer lamented a lengthy absentee list, with his Brewers side missing 12 players through injury, illness, loan eligibility and international duty.
He said: “You’ve got to pay respect to the two line-ups to be brutally honest.
“We’ve got 12 missing and when you look at those who are missing, the term men versus boys today was exactly what it was.
“That wasn’t anything other than experience in league appearances – I think they had close to 3,000 appearances in their starting XI, we had 1,000 and 400 of them were Curtis Tilt.
“We’ve just got boys playing. You see the changes they’re bringing on and we’re bringing on, we just couldn’t compete. It was as simple as that.
“Today will probably be for some of them, the biggest football learning they’ll have because it really hurts today this.
“It’s something we’re just going to have to take.”