Wimbledon

[Mooro]

The longer they stay out of top two divisions, the harder it will be for them to keep what support they have. Once they fall down League 1 then it will become even harder I suspect. Depends which top teams are able to attract the youngsters of MK
How long before the financial crutch of Winkleman gives way?

[Baboo]

part of me thinks AFC Wimbledon have had it a bit too easy.

And what does the other part of you think about how easy MK Dons have had it????

Most football clubs have a history of grandfathers and fathers and sons being fans through the years, or it was the club where you were come from. As MK Dons have only the latter, it must be a task to attract locals who up until 10 years ago the residents would have presumably been Premiership supporters (as there is not much else round MK), as Northampton, Luton and Oxford presumably keep their historic support.

I worked in Mk for many years until about 5-6 yrs ago. A few of my ex-work colleagues who had very little interest in football then and knew almost nothing about the game / traditions / history etc now have season tickets.
I've been in email contact and this is probably a typical view - &quotit's all just football to me - and excuse for an afternoon out every couple of weeks with a couple of beers.&quot If (hopefully when) the going gets tough these people will stop attending. As yet I don't think they have any genuine attachment &amp feeling for the club in the way that those who have been round the block do.
A perhaps more worrying one was - Southend fan who I've attended Shrimpers v Oxford games with home and away now has an MK Dons season ticket.

[theox]

I understand the feelings against MK Dons but I think it's a bit much to hope they go out of business. They obviously have fans who go home and away. We should all be able to appreciate what level of commitment that involves. Further, there must be youngsters who are now growing up having only supported MK. Regardless of how they were created, 10 years is a long time to build up a bond and I can't see how it would be acceptable for that bond to be removed but what happened to Wimbledon be the worst thing ever.

Fair enough, hate the owners and the FA / FL for allowing it to happen but wishing for a club to go out of existence is a bit much when there is a fanbase to consider, regardless of how little history it has.

Perhaps it would be better to direct this vitriol into ensuring this never happens again.........

I am now taking cover!

[Baboo]

Fair enough, hate the owners and the FA / FL for allowing it to happen but wishing for a club to go out of existence is a bit much when there is a fanbase to consider, regardless of how little history it has.

That's your view. Mine is absolutely the opposite. They were just given a Football League team from nowhere. Take it away and they'll be back where they started - with nowt. Now if some of these so called supporters were to then rally round and set up an AFC MK Dons and start again much lower down the pyramid, well that would be a different matter altogether.

[SmileyMan]

I am now taking cover!

You're not on your own, I have pretty much the same view, but you're pissing in the wind around here, which is full of real football fans

I care about MK Dons and AFC Wimbledon exactly 50% each of how much I cared about the original Wimbledon. 50% of fuck all isn't very much, though.

The question is, if someone came along and through quirk of fate offered Oxford a Premiership place with guaranteed Champions League football, would you turn it down?

[SteMerritt]

The question is, if someone came along and through quirk of fate offered Oxford a Premiership place with guaranteed Champions League football, would you turn it down?

...but it would be closer to the AFCW/MKD situation if they also wanted to move the club to Cornwall as part of the deal.

[Kernow Yellow]

The question is, if someone came along and through quirk of fate offered Oxford a Premiership place with guaranteed Champions League football, would you turn it down?

...but it would be closer to the AFCW/MKD situation if they also wanted to move the club to Cornwall as part of the deal.

Hehe, now you're talking!

[Kernow Yellow]

I care about MK Dons and AFC Wimbledon exactly 50% each of how much I cared about the original Wimbledon. 50% of fuck all isn't very much, though.

I really don't get this ambivalence to supporters of other teams. A big part of the joys of following football for me, especially away from home, is meeting fans of our opponents and having a drink with them while discussing the problems their club is facing, and realising that they care exactly as much as you do about their football team, and how important it is to them.

Without the kind of fans that have brought Wimbledon FC/AFC back from the dead (and arguably also those that travel home and away to watch MK too), football would be NOTHING, a soulless spectacle played out only on the telly for the super-rich. What Wimbledon fans who formed AFC have achieved by getting back in the league within ten years of having their club stolen from them is absolutely phenomenal, and should be an inspiration to us all, even if not everyone agrees on all the details of the way they went about it.

The question is, if someone came along and through quirk of fate offered Oxford a Premiership place with guaranteed Champions League football, would you turn it down?

Yes. I can't think of anything worse than my entrance money going towards paying lying, diving cheats like Rooney and Terry more money in a week than I earn in 5 years. Especially if we hadn't earned the right to be there, and therefore weren't respected for it. Mind you, most people in the media (including a worrying number of former players) seem to have no respect for the history of the game, acting as if football was somehow invented at the moment when the First Division was renamed the Premier League. But that's a whole different topic...

[SmileyMan]

I really don't get this ambivalence to supporters of other teams. A big part of the joys of following football for me, especially away from home, is meeting fans of our opponents and having a drink with them while discussing the problems their club is facing, and realising that they care exactly as much as you do about their football team, and how important it is to them

Ah, the fans of other teams, that's different. But the prevailing wind among the Real Fans is that we should tar and feather the fans of MK Dons for having the temerity to insult all right-minded individuals by wandering down the road to watch a game of league football at their new local club.

Somewhere in those stands, there's a kid of 15 whose dad first took him when he was 5. And you want to take his club away from him, for the sake of 'avenging' something that wasn't his fault? You would visit the sins of the owner and the cowardly FA on the fan? And you'd do that only in MK Dons case - you wouldn't heap opprobrium on the fans of other clubs with less than savoury owners?

Saying that you want MK Dons to go bust because you get joy out of meeting fans of all the other clubs except theirs is perverse in the extreme. Anyone who's followed them for a decade as they've slid down the league deserves a hearty shake of the hand - they've earned the badge of 'fan' just as much as you or I.

[x586]

I understand the feelings against MK Dons but I think it's a bit much to hope they go out of business. They obviously have fans who go home and away. We should all be able to appreciate what level of commitment that involves. Further, there must be youngsters who are now growing up having only supported MK. Regardless of how they were created, 10 years is a long time to build up a bond and I can't see how it would be acceptable for that bond to be removed but what happened to Wimbledon be the worst thing ever.

Fair enough, hate the owners and the FA / FL for allowing it to happen but wishing for a club to go out of existence is a bit much when there is a fanbase to consider, regardless of how little history it has.

Perhaps it would be better to direct this vitriol into ensuring this never happens again.........

I am now taking cover!

I entirely agree with this - at root, blame the Taylor Report and a Wimbledon board who decamped their team to various parts of south London over a thirteen year period. Blame the FA/FL. Celebrate the fact that AFC have made it back to the FL as (most of us, I hope) do.

Blaming the present supporters, or wishing nasty things on the MK Dons, is just pure spite. And, as many times on here before, the usual bollocks that people who enjoy football, but are not on the obsessive spectrum, are somehow less worthy of being taken in any way seriously ....

[Kernow Yellow]

I really don't get this ambivalence to supporters of other teams. A big part of the joys of following football for me, especially away from home, is meeting fans of our opponents and having a drink with them while discussing the problems their club is facing, and realising that they care exactly as much as you do about their football team, and how important it is to them

Ah, the fans of other teams, that's different. But the prevailing wind among the Real Fans is that we should tar and feather the fans of MK Dons for having the temerity to insult all right-minded individuals by wandering down the road to watch a game of league football at their new local club.

Somewhere in those stands, there's a kid of 15 whose dad first took him when he was 5. And you want to take his club away from him, for the sake of 'avenging' something that wasn't his fault? You would visit the sins of the owner and the cowardly FA on the fan? And you'd do that only in MK Dons case - you wouldn't heap opprobrium on the fans of other clubs with less than savoury owners?

Saying that you want MK Dons to go bust because you get joy out of meeting fans of all the other clubs except theirs is perverse in the extreme. Anyone who's followed them for a decade as they've slid down the league deserves a hearty shake of the hand - they've earned the badge of 'fan' just as much as you or I.

You seem to be confusing me with someone else (or just imagining my opinions for me, much as you build up this 'real fan' straw man, when you're the only person I can see who's used that expression). I've never argued any of the opinions you put in my mouth in your post above.

As far as I'm concerned what's happened is in the past now. That's not to say we should forget it, or let it happen again, because it was very, very wrong. But as you say there are several thousand football fans, including many kids, who regularly go and watch Milton Keynes, and I'm sure they're not all as apparently disinterested as those Baboo knows. [As an aside, there are also thousands of genuine and loyal Luton fans who feel pretty aggrieved that their club was dumped out of the league to punish the sins of previous owners, but hey, let's all laugh at them shall we?]

Having said all that, *you* don't seem to be giving any credit at all to the fans of AFC, who have achieved an enormous amount in such a short space of time. How can you not have the tiniest soft spot for them and their club (which, after all, is effectively the fans), after all they've been through? They've done a little bit more than just wander down the road to watch a game of football at their new local club, as you put it. So which club would I prefer to see do well, given that some football clubs are bound to do better than others? That's a no-brainer.

Neither, by the way, have you addressed the point I made in reply to your other comment. If you would honestly sit quite happily and watch an 'Oxford' team which had been effectively stolen from a different club, and enjoy the fact that it was at the top of the Premier League rather than bumbling along in League 2 where it should be, then yes, I do think we're approaching football from completely different angles.

[SmileyMan]

You seem to be confusing me with someone else (or just imagining my opinions for me, much as you build up this 'real fan' straw man, when you're the only person I can see who's used that expression). I've never argued any of the opinions you put in my mouth in your post above.

My apologies, I did assign to you some of the other sentiments in the thread, but looking back, you made none of them.

[GodalmingYellow]

I understand the feelings against MK Dons but I think it's a bit much to hope they go out of business. They obviously have fans who go home and away. We should all be able to appreciate what level of commitment that involves. Further, there must be youngsters who are now growing up having only supported MK. Regardless of how they were created, 10 years is a long time to build up a bond and I can't see how it would be acceptable for that bond to be removed but what happened to Wimbledon be the worst thing ever.

Fair enough, hate the owners and the FA / FL for allowing it to happen but wishing for a club to go out of existence is a bit much when there is a fanbase to consider, regardless of how little history it has.

Perhaps it would be better to direct this vitriol into ensuring this never happens again.........

I am now taking cover!

No need to duck, you're entitled to your opinion as much as me and everyone else.

There are 2 further points I would make over and above what I have already written on the subject.

1. Where were these &quotsupporters&quot from Milton Keynes, when Milton Keynes had football clubs in the past in the top ranks of non-league football? They certainly weren't supporting &quottheir&quot club then.

2. If these supporters were so keen to have a football club, why didn't they start one instead of stealing one?

Franchise FC does not deserve it's place in the Football League on any sound basis. Had MK Dons achieved it's present position by merit, then I and many others would applaud it.

It is entirely justified to have storng desire for Franchise to go out of business. Then those supporters you are so concerned about cna strat a new club from the bottom. Just like AFCW have had to do.

[Baboo]

[
1. Where were these &quotsupporters&quot from Milton Keynes, when Milton Keynes had football clubs in the past in the top ranks of non-league football? They certainly weren't supporting &quottheir&quot club then.

2. If these supporters were so keen to have a football club, why didn't they start one instead of stealing one?

Franchise FC does not deserve it's place in the Football League on any sound basis. Had MK Dons achieved it's present position by merit, then I and many others would applaud it.

It is entirely justified to have storng desire for Franchise to go out of business. Then those supporters you are so concerned about cna strat a new club from the bottom. Just like AFCW have had to do.

Wholeheartedly agree, obviously.

&amp No I would not want to watch Oxford in the Premier League / Champions League if we had got there by stealing another clubs identity.

&amp I too think that part of the great footballing experience is meeting fans of other clubs on our travels and discussing past, present, &amp common experiences and opinions. If we played MK Dons away I may well meet my ex-colleagues, some of whom I would still call mates. But as is the norm I would not be saying, &quotbest of luck for the rest of the season&quot. More like, &quothope you go bust&quot.

As the t shirt says - &quotFranchise football, never forgive, never forget&quot.

[SmileyMan]

It is entirely justified to have storng desire for Franchise to go out of business....

...until then