'IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO BEAT THAT FEELING OF WINNING!"

GRAHAM Alexplayed ander in over a thougames sand and has managed another 450 since hanging up his boots at the age of 40

- Chris Dunlavy

So it's hardly surprising that the ten months he spent out of work af ter leaving Motherwell last July felt more like ten years.

Nor that his first game at the helm of MK Dons, a chaotic 5-3 victory over Wrexham on the opening day of the season, proved so cathartic.

"I remember turning to Chris Lucketti, my assistant, and saying 'Christ, we've been waiting over a year for that feeling"," recounts the 51-year-old, whose previous match was a Europa Conference League exit the at hands of Sligo.

"It's a like drug. The high is unbelievable.

That feeling you get straight after a win, there's nothing else I've ever found that comes close. That's what brings you back, no matter how many times kicks you in the teeth." Alexander football or Grezza, as he is more widely known hasn't taken too much punishment at the hands of a game he still adores.

As a player, he enjoyed remarkable 24-year a career that began at Scunthorpe in 1988, featured a Premier League debut for Burnley at 37 and ended, implausibly, with Alexander scoring an injury-time equaliser for Preston direct from a free-kick with his final kick in professional football.

By then, he had become only the second outfield player in the history of English football to surpass 1,000 appearances.

“I remember getting a lot of coverage when I was 37 because I’d just made my debut in the Premier League,” he laughs.

“People kept asking me how I was able to keep going. I was mystified. I’d say ‘What, how do I keep doing the job I absolutely love? Very easily’.