David Artell believes that his players have to try and forget what has gone before this season and go into Saturday’s bottom-of-the-table clash with Doncaster Rovers with a different mindset.

The Alex have to win to prevent a relegation back into League Two and with the Alex needing a footballing miracle at this late stage, the boss is looking for the perfect opportunity to end a barren run of 8 consecutive defeats.

Doncaster Rovers have endured an equally difficult season and they can ill-afford to lose to the league’s bottom club this weekend if they have any of their own hopes of escaping the drop.

Artell told the club’s official website: “Professional pride should be a given for me and I think the players have to make sure that they are better than the week before. They have to look on improving their own performance from MK Dons. Can they be better again? Can they get better than their opponent and influence the outcome more?

“What has happened before shouldn’t really affect their performance on Saturday. There is nothing they can do about that. All they can do is look to improve every week and if they do then we will get back to where we need to be.

“It is about them becoming more effective, more consistent and believing that they are League One players. We are here on merit and they are good players. We have to believe that again and it may take a bit of time to rebuild. It took us a year, 18 months to build that team who were good enough to win promotion and it may take that again but this is what happens at this club. I understand that.

The boss added: “That is the agreement we make when Perry Ng is 7, when Charlie Kirk chooses us at 6 or whatever and when you sell your best players, it is difficult, but that’s the job and you have work hard at rebuilding the team and that is what we will do.”