Manager Keith Hill gave his thoughts on Tuesday night’s League One fixture v MK Dons while reflecting on Saturday’s defeat to Doncaster Rovers…
“I’ve explained to the players that regardless of this result [Doncaster Rovers] we’re still on track with six games to go up until 23 games played to reach the target that we’ve set, and that’s our aim now.
“Yes we were dreaming when we were sat fifth place after beating Preston in the league, but we’ll continue to dream because I think we’ve got a good team and we’ve got a great set of lads.
“Again we were being hindered [on Saturday] by Jack O’Connell being ill and obviously Matty Done getting sent-off going into Tuesday’s fixture. The challenges are very difficult at the moment but we will fight through them together as a team.
“The tests that we are now facing are the ones that we wanted to test ourselves with at the start of the season, or when we got promoted, so regardless of who have I available [for Tuesday night], I’ll try and pick a side that represents Rochdale Football Club. We’ll try and get as many points as we can, but equally so, we will have to accept sometimes that the challenge will be too big for us. Like I said before, Doncaster Rovers are a very good side and I don’t know which way it would have gone had we had 11 men on the pitch.
He added: “There’s an easy way of solving those problems and that’s spending money. You can easily rectify the challenges and take on the likes of MK Dons, Swindon and Doncaster by spending money - it’s as simple as that.
“But we refuse to do that because we don’t want to ruin the football club, or take it into the unknown with debt year after year. We’re a well-run club so the challenges will be there, but we’ll continue with good honesty and challenge those teams with honesty. We’ve got some very good results this season by doing that.”