Snak

For dem som ikke kender baggrunden for MK Dons og deres hijacking af det nu hedengangne Wimbledon FC. Opsummeringen er fra 2005 men reel nok:

In 1997, realising the Wimbledon fairytale was on the wane, then chairman Sam Hammam pulled off one of the greatest confidence tricks in the modern era by selling Wimbledon to a group of Norwegian businessmen for £22 million.

How did he manage to sell a club with no assets for £22 million? The promise of franchise football. The Norwegians didn’t buy Wimbledon FC, they bought a place in the Premiership. Hammam had put it into the minds of the Norwegians that the club would be able to move lock stock and barrel to Dublin in what would be a lucrative Premiership franchise. Other places bandied around as possible locations for the franchise include Basingstoke, Wigan and Cardiff. At the time of the sale, Wimbledon had been playing for a number of years at Selhurst Park, the home of Crystal Palace, after the introduction of the Taylor Report meant their home ground Plough Lane had become unsuitable for use. Hammam later pocketed £8 million pounds from the sale of Plough Lane to Safeways. A nice by-product of the Taylor Report for Hammam.

The rich Norwegians failed to invest enough in the team as they were distracted by the desperate realisation that moving the club to Dublin or anywhere else was not as simple as Hammam had explained, and relegation from the Premiership followed. Relegation heaped the financial pressure on the owners. Hammam was all talk and no trousers! This wasn’t how it was supposed to be! The investment wasn’t paying back, and there didn’t seem to he any hope of a return on their investment as it stood. Unless…

It was the financial state of the club that was used as the reason for relocating the club, yet with the money gained from transfer fees the club was actually making a profit towards the end. It is interesting to note that the 3-man FA committee that decided the fate of Wimbledon in 2002 were given accounts that did not include this £22 million transfer income, and their decision to give the go-ahead for the move to MK was largely based on the financial plight of the club.

Anyone who observes the events of the past 8 years will be in no doubt that the express intentions of the new owners from day one was to move the club elsewhere, any claims of necessity around relocation are superficial and contrived. If anything, the owners themselves helped create the feeling of necessity by failing to invest in the club. £22 million was generated by transfer sales in just a couple of years, yet little was invested in the team or the cause of relocating to their home in Merton. Significant sums of money were however spent on researching the move to Milton Keynes.

Anyway, to cut a long story a bit shorter, the FA gave the club permission to move to Milton Keynes in 2002, although it took another 2 years until the club got the go-ahead to use the name MK Dons and to change the club badge and kit, effectively creating a whole new football club. The move to MK was the brainchild of pop producer Pete Winkleman, who is now the current chairman. Winkleman, or ‘crazily-coiffeured club-killing tosser’ as he is known in the Dons community, acquired the club as part of the consortium InterMK that helped bring the club out of administration. Winkleman has a history of looking to bring a ready-made football league club to Milton Keynes (Luton, Watford, QPR) instead of taking the traditional route of helping a local club up through the divisions. The problems at Wimbledon and the intervention of superstore giant ASDA meant Winkey’s dream could become reality.

ASDA wanted to build a store in Milton Keynes. Due to planning regulations for the area in question, they could not build one without building a sports stadium for the community as part of the deal. They needed a sports team on board in order to get around the planning regulations. In stepped Winkleman with a proposal for a land deal. Whereby ASDA got their store, Winkleman got his stadium and Milton Keynes got a professional football club and a place in the Football League.

Milton Keynes already had a football club – Milton Keynes City – but it collapsed due to lack of investment and support from the community.

Most football fans would rather see their team financially crippled and relegated 5 times in a row than see it disappear altogether, especially to Milton Keynes of all places. Milton Keynes, the place Bill Bailey calls ‘Satan’s Layby’. An artificial place for an artificial football club. The home of the Open University, the town was created in the 70’s as part of a government project for a ‘model city’. MK is a bland copy of an identikit American city where the traditional British ‘road’ or ‘street’ has been replaced by the ‘Boulevard’ (the club itself is based on Silbury Boulevard). For some reason they’ve also decided to have concrete Cows dotted around the place. And another thing, why do the residents persist in calling it a City, when it isn’t, and never has been. Before they crept up and stole Wimbledon it was also the largest town in Europe without a professional football team.

The views of opposition fans regarding the MK Dons have been quite hostile as you’d expect, with many calling on their clubs to boycott friendly matches with the newly formed club. Tottenham, Charlton and Luton (twice) are among the clubs who have had to cancel planned friendlies against MK Dons due to supporter pressure. Maybe things will change in time, they usually do, but for the next few years the MK Dons will be walking a rocky path.

Når vedkommende skriver:
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Emotions would be far too raw and I won´t give any income to that football club so I´ll watch at Kingsmeadow or go to a garden centre or something

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Så er det vist sådan at i FA-cup så deles hjemme -og udehold om entreindtægterne (?)
I så fald ville der også tilfalde MK Dons penge, hvis det var i London kampen blev spillet. Så skulle han stadig sidde i et havecenter og se på TV, hvis han nu er så principfast ;-)

"But Simon Wheeler, chairman of the Independent Wimbledon Supporters Association, will not be there to see it.

Wheeler said: "This has reopened a lot of scars. We never wanted this to happen and frankly I feel numb.

"I won´t be going and I know lots of other fans won´t be going. Personally I would rather take my girlfriend´s mother to the garden centre than go to that game.

"Other fans will have to take a long look at themselves and make a personal, informed decision. We´ll talk to the fans and to the club.

"We didn´t ever want this to happen but it does highlight the phenomenal success of AFC Wimbledon from having had everything ripped out."


Det ser ud som om, at flere og flere fans fra London ikke vil tage den korte tur nord på.

Psykologisk ville en stærk reaktion på lægterne mod MK Dons også være en anerkendelse af dem - fraværet er en måde at signalere, at de ingen betydning har. Modigt. Og selv om jeg af ren stædighed forsøger at holde af MK Dons, så bliver det sværere og sværere efter de gode indlæg og især efter Onkel Acherons historietime ;-)

Jeg kan godt forstå dem. Det er jo et møde som aldrig burde have fundet sted.

Der er løs snak om at i stedet for at AFC-supportere tropper op på Stadium:MK, så vil der som en slags protest komme supportere fra alle mulige andre klubber. Ulempen er til gengæld, at den grimme, grimme Franchise-klub kommer til at tjene kassen på det (om end halvdelen går til AFC).

Tranmere tabte godt igår, men de har min støtte med det tiltag de havde igår på en fredagskamp. Man kunne komme ind og se opgøret for £5, se det kunne andre lære noget af.

Kampen blev set af over 10.000 på stadionet, hvilket er flot for en klub som Tranmere.

Selvfølgelig er det vejen fremad om end prisen også hænger sammen med, at kampen blev vist på SKY. Men den lave billetpris kan hurtigt blive tjent ind igen via mersalg af merchandise m.m.

Feed the Pope and he will score!

Utroligt som en spiller ligepludselig kan score mål, jeg håber Port Vale rykker op med Gillingham, det havde været et par gode hold at få op, hvis de kan holde deres fremgang.

Så fik Pope sit hattrick.