Head Coach Mark Robinson has been focusing on changing habits during an international break for The Dons, as we bid to get our league season back on track against Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow.
“We’ve changed things a bit recently,” said Robbo ahead of Saturday afternoon’s League One game at The Cherry Red Records Stadium. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do and maybe went away from a little bit.
“We got off to a good start and you all have to reflect on what you are doing and sometimes you can just get into habits of doing things. It’s stuff that I believe in, that I always promised myself I was going to do if I was going to get into this position. I introduced it at the back end of last week and it takes a bit of changing for some of the lads, because they’ve been doing the same thing for a long time, but they are starting to buy into it and the sessions have been excellent.
“It’s like anything - nothing happens overnight, but the key thing is that the players are buying into it and they’re really enjoying the training sessions and they are coming in and thinking every day.”
Having been relegated from the Championship last season, Sheffield Wednesday are currently ninth in the table – five points better off than The Dons. You can also see pre-match interviews with defender Paul Kalambayi, back in contention after recovering from injury, plus captain Alex Woodyard on the work he’s been putting in over the past fortnight.
“It’s about how we impose our style on them,” said Robbo. “We know they’ve got good players. We need to really go and impose our style. I think apart from possibly just the Rotherham game we’ve tried to do that, although there’s been things that haven’t been good enough in certain areas.
“They’re organised, they’re not a side that loses heavily. Obviously, any Darren Moore side tries to play and as I’ve said they’ve got some really good individual players – so we need to be aware of that, and that collectively we’re strong and that we give ourselves a framework where our individuals come to the forefront as well.
“It’s more about where we’re heading and what we’re trying to do. It’s great to be back home and play a club like Sheffield Wednesday, but that’s not where I want to it to be. I just want it to be that it’s great to play football, it’s great to play for this football club. These are the levels that we have to aim to reach every single game.
“Whether it’s playing in front of 800 people or 18,000 – I want it to become this is just us and how we behave and how we aim to perform every single game.”
You can see the full pre-match interview with Head Coach Mark Robinson after Thursday’s training session below, via the link to our official YouTube channel.