Former St Johnstone defender, Jack Sanders has endured a nightmare start to life with MK Dons – as it emerged he has already sought reassurance about his place in the centre-back pecking order with his new club.
After being bought by the English League Two side in January for £150,000, Sanders suffered a debut to forget against Doncaster Rovers, playing a slack pass that led to the Yorkshire team taking the lead.
He featured in two further early February defeats, making it a quick-fire hat-trick of losses.
It transpired that the illness which kept Saints’ summer recruit from Kilmarnock out of Simo Valakari’s match-day squad before his departure to Milton Keynes was a kidney infection.
That required four days spent in hospital.
After making his recovery, Sanders was then faced with the task of getting back into a team no longer led by the manager who signed him, with Scott Lindsey being sacked and Ben Gladwin taking over as interim boss.
Now, it has been reported in the MK Citizen that the 25-year-old initiated a chat with Gladwin to establish where he stands in the first team picture.
“It has been a rough start for him,” said the caretaker recently.
“He signed for the manager, then had the illness, then the changes have happened. He’s there or thereabouts.
“Jack has trained really well, and he gives us another really good option.
“He will be a really big part of the club moving forward, I have no doubt.
“I’m trying to reassure him that’s the case, but in the short term, we are where we are.
“We’ve just won a game and we want him to be a big part of the group on and off the pitch.”
On a drip for four days
Before he was sacked, Lindsey gave details of Sanders’ health ordeal that began in Perth.
“He travelled with us to Tranmere (for a game on February 15),” he explained.
“But we sent him home on Friday and he ended up in hospital through to Monday on a drip and really strong antibiotics.
“He had a similar issue at his former club, and had been on a strong course of antibiotics, but we thought it had cleared when he signed.
“In fact, it was still there.
“In the games he’s played, we can now see he hasn’t been at 100% because there was still some infection in his body.
“After the games at Doncaster and Barrow, he said he really tired towards the end of the games and he didn’t understand why. Now we know the reason.”
Sanders may get his chance at Cheltenham this weekend as MK Dons lost 3-0 at Port Vale on Saturday, when he was an unused substitute.
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