Laurence Maguire happy to contribute winning goal for MK Dons against Cheltenham

MK Dons defender Laurence Maguire was happy to grab his first goal for the club and be the matchwinner as the Dons beat Cheltenham.

Maguire’s goal in the 86th minute saw the Dons complete a comeback to go from 2-0 down to beat Cheltenham at Stadium MK, which in the process confirmed a fifth straight League Two win for Scott Lindsey’s side.

Speaking after, Maguire said he felt an MJ Williams strike that hit him on the way in against Swindon last week could’ve been his, but that he was delighted to now have his outright first goal of the season and looked to push on and score more.

He said, “Obviously, last week’s, I did feel it was mine but obviously it hasn’t gone down as mine and MJ has claimed that one. But today’s definitely mine and I’m off the mark for the season. It’s something I’ve been disappointed with in terms of I haven’t got on the end of enough in the opposition box and I know I can score goals. I pride myself on keeping clean sheets and defending, but I also feel like I’ve got attributes to score goals in the opposition box. To get my first today, I’m buzzing and hopefully I’ll push on and get a few more for this football club.”

MK Dons fell 2-0 down in the opening 14 minutes at Stadium MK and Maguire said that the team knew where it had gone wrong early on, but that they showed good qualities to recover.

He said, “We know obviously the performance wasn’t good enough in terms of the first half especially, but we just needed to add more urgency to the game and make it a bit more scrappy. Sometimes you can’t always play the way we want to play, but massive credit to the boys. The character we showed to turn it around is massive for us and this football club.”

Victory meant that MK Dons also had to come from behind for the third league game in a row, but Maguire gave credit to Cheltenham for testing them while also feeling a fifth straight League Two win showed the progress that the team are making.

He said, “It’s something we probably need to have a look at. I just feel like we lacked a little bit of urgency in the first 20-30 minutes of the game. We probably turned up thinking that we could play our own game but credit to Cheltenham. They came and pressed us really well, went man-for-man and that’s when we need to realise that we needed to make it more scrappy and play quicker. I felt like we played really slow in the first half, as you can see second half, we won a lot of first contacts and went on to win. It’s something we’ll work out, but obviously the main is this club’s won five games on the bounce and we’re heading in the right direction.”