Does the MK Dons squad have enough firepower to push for promotion this season?

Milton Keynes Dons enter the 2025/26 Sky Bet League Two season off the back of a disastrous last months.

Following a failed Playoff campaign in the 2023/24 season culminating with getting pulverised at the hands of Scott Lindsey’s Crawley Town.

The next season they capitulated in dramatic fashion. In an attempt to improve, they fell to 17^th in the standings, sacked their head coach and replaced with their nemesis of the year before, Scott Lindsay.

He oversaw a rise to third in the table before freefalling to 18^th and losing his job too.

Paul Warne arrived and kept them up in 19^th ending a turgid twelve months all at Stadium MK wish to forget.

You would think this coming season cannot get any worse, right?

Looking ahead to the season, beginning at home to Oldham Athletic on 2^nd August, Warne will be hoping that the campaign can begin in a more positive fashion.

The squad depth at Warne’s disposal is the main sign of positivity that supporters can look towards.

Given the luxuries that are now on offer since their takeover by Fahad Al Ghanim, the club has far greater room for manoeuvre in the market and in their depth chart they can carry.

The already-bloated playing staff has seen another five new additions; the pick of these being the brand new “front three” who will as a group be the starters the Buckinghamshire outfit call upon to kick off in eight days’ time.

Brought in to operate as the wingers, the Dons splashed the cash to recruit the Guatemalan-international and Championship starlet of last season for Derby County, Nathaniel Mendez-Laing.

Now aged 34, he will not be the force of previous years gone by, however, having played 41 times in England’s second tier in 2024/25, to join a fourth-tier side can be worded as nothing other than a coup.

Operating on the opposite flank, Rushian Hepburn-Murphy arrived through the door back at the start of July, moving down a division from Crawley, another player who has spent the previous three years in League One and featured 69 times in the process.

The tricky winger will aim to showcase his blistering pace and allow an outfield that will be fundamental to any hopes of counter-attacking to capitalise on breakdowns that fall in the Dons’ favour.

Whilst Mendez-Laing might be the biggest name of the arrivals, the striker to lead the line, Aaron Collins, may well prove the best bit of business conducted.

Collins is moving south fresh off the back of firing Bolton Wanderers to an eighth-place finish in League One, scoring 19 goals in all competitions.

The striker who was courted by a host of teams in the summer months, before the ongoing speculation came to fruition and the Welshman signed the contract at Stadium MK.

Having a striker is one of the key components in any promotion-pushing side, and, this is something Warne has in abundance.

Between Collins, Scott Hogan and Callum Hendry, the department is in an incredibly healthy position with competition from all, who could justifiably stake their own claim for the starting shirt.

Looking back to last season, the competition for places up the top were in no means as healthy as the current crop.

Fresh from the departure of Max Dean, the Dons had the options of the new signing Callum Hendry and Ellis Harrison.

The depth was missing and if there was to be an injury, it would have meant that another squad player would have found themselves as an emergency-option.

The Dons supporters cannot claim that their new Head Coach has not received the backing to go and aim far, far higher than 19^th in the table in ten months from now.

Whether this is the case, only time will tell.

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