JOHN Coleman admitted his Accrington side’s last-gasp defeat at MK Dons was a “body blow”.

Matt O’Riley headed home in the second minute of stoppage time after Stanley had come from 2-0 down to level things up.

Cameron Jerome’s double put the Dons two goals to the good before a Dion Charles strike and Andrew Surman own goal put the game on knife edge.

Coleman thought there would only be one winner from there, but saw his side’s play-off hopes hit at Stadium MK, Stanley now 10th and four points shy of the top six.  

“It’s frustrating – I don’t think for one minute that we deserved to lose the game,” the Reds boss said.

“If you’d have told me that after 15 minutes, I’d have disagreed with you because they moved the ball quickly, we knew what we’d expected, we planned for it, but it didn’t work out.

“They didn’t score because of good passing play, they scored because of a horrendous error by ourselves and they created a couple of chances in that spell. Then we changed the shape and we were quite comfortable.

“(It was a) really poor goal to concede, the second one. Then we wrestle our way back into the game and then at 2-2 there only looks to be one winner, we were the aggressor.

“It’s a complete body blow for how hard the players have worked.

“You can’t govern for mistakes made by individual players – sometimes you’ve just got to battle through it and try and do our best to try and get out of this. But we can’t be conceding three soft goals.”

The home side were by far the more dominant team in the first half and took the lead inside 10 minutes.

Matthew Sorinola’s looping ball over the top was latched on to by Jerome, who chested it down, rounded the goalkeeper and slotted home from a tight angle.

MK doubled their lead less than 10 minutes after the restart, Sorinola again providing the assist for Jerome, this time a left-wing cross that was flicked on at the near post.

Accrington responded with two quick goals, however, as first Charles took advantage of some sloppy defending to fire home from close range before Surman sliced his clearance from a corner into his own net.

But, deep in stoppage time, Sorinola grabbed his third assist of the afternoon as his ball to the back post was met with a thumping header by O’Riley to secure victory.