Football Season Review

After years of being League One's "nearly" team, MK Dons have finally managed to break their pattern and seal promotion to the Championship for the first time in their short history. They achieved promotion in the most dramatic of fashions, as they leapfrogged Preston on the last day of the season, as they crushed already-relegated Yeovil and watched the Lillywhites succumb to a shock defeat to Colchester. Karl Robinson's men had missed out on a play-off place in their previous two campaigns, but this was really the season of their coming of age, as they finally started showing the cutting edge to match their pretty passing football. This has a lot to do with the fact that Robinson has managed to bring in two superb strikers on loan in Will Grigg and Benik Afobe, but the fact that the Dons kept winning even after the latter had left speaks volumes about how much fire power they have had. A poor run of form that they had in late February and early March looked set to cost them direct promotion, but they really stepped up in the late stages of the season and recorded nine wins and a draw in their last ten meetings to produce an unlikely comeback in the race for second and end up leapfrogging Preston. They are likely to be one of the most intriguing sides of next season's Championship, as the second tier will present Robinson's footballing philosophy with a stern test. The young manager has been very persistent with his desire for the Dons to play patient passing football, but it will be interesting to see whether he could be tempted into switching to a more pragmatic approach if his all-attack style fails to yield results against stronger opponents.

Player of the Season: Dele Alli