After back-to-back promotions including a 92-goal Championship season, attempting to establish MK Dons in the Premier League has been absolute hell.
We stayed up with some luck last season on 36 points. It was a miserable season to manage — we played very little football and just had to grind out points where we could get them — but given we had a wage budget of less than half the second-lowest team in the league I was pleased with the achievement.
In our second season, I feel we should be starting to push on but it just isn't happening. We are young but have some quality with two wonderkids in Bardghji and Aseko Nkili and some decent experience in Oxford, (Oriol) Busquets, and O'Riley. Kalimuendo scored 15 league goals last season which basically kept us up despite a poor average rating.
We just cannot score and still struggle to impose ourselves on games in any way. After eight games we have scored ONE goal, and that was from a corner.
This is roughly the system that has got us two promotions. Reeled off five consecutive losses to start the season, no goals. We had two big problems: defenders and deep midfielders making absurd decisions on the ball and losing it in dangerous areas, and too many rushed, hopeful passes hit in the vague direction of our quick and skilful but not very physical front three. I realize it's aggressive but we were the lowest-budget team in the Championship as well and overachieved by playing a high-tempo, pressing game (with players FAR inferior to what we have now).
In an attempt to solve those issues, I (against my will) switched to a more counter-attacking 4-2-3-1. This improved us defensively with three clean sheets in a row, but we still can't score.
While I appreciate we are still big underdogs in this league, we surely have enough talent after three Premier League transfer windows to expect a bit better than this. Any ideas?