Paul Warne ‘really proud’ of 10-man MK Dons after drawing at Tranmere

Paul Warne was “really proud” of his 10-man MK Dons side after they came from two goals behind to draw 2-2 with Tranmere at Prenton Park.

Charlie Whitaker’s brace put Rovers two goals to the good at half-time before Jon Mellish got one back for the visitors.

Jonathan Leko was sent off a minute later before Kane Thompson-Sommers equalised to cap a crazy four-minute spell for the Dons.

Warne said: “Really proud of them today. Weirdly, I left the stadium last week with a bit of anxiety, this week I don’t.

“I was really pleased with them, I think it’s going to be worth more than a point psychologically for the group.

“I said to them ‘you’re not a soft group, you never give in’ and that’s a really good attribute to have as a football team.

“I didn’t think we deserved to go in at half-time 2-0 down, we made two mistakes.

“Our box-to-box play was actually really good but we just didn’t have any cutting edge, any shots on target, although there were a couple we should have pulled the trigger and we didn’t.

“Accompanied with that, our set-pieces were a bit shambolic in the first half.

“Second half I thought we played well but you’re not sure the goal is going to come and we made changes.

“Got the first, got the second and then I honestly thought we were going to win it.

“I said to my staff ‘this is why people come to live sport’. It had every single emotion going.”

Tranmere manager Andy Crosby could not hide his disappointment after seeing his side surrender a two-goal advantage.

He said: “Desperately disappointing, when we get ourselves 2-0 up and in control of the game.

“It was quite a frenetic, frantic game in terms of possession control from either team, but we get ourselves 2-0 in front and go into the second half trying to score the third goal, trying to be positive.

“We made changes to try and maintain freshness and energy on the pitch, we concede a goal from a corner when we get the first contact and from the way that we set up that’s an area of weakness for us in terms of the edge of the box and the lad strikes it through a load of bodies and it goes in.

“At 2-1 we have to learn to manage those moments and manage stages of the game in a different way, so now the scoreline means we walk away really disappointed with one point and because of the circumstances of how the game ended up panning out.”