Milton Keynes Dons

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Milton Keynes Dons
Mkodons Logo.svg
Basic data
Surname Milton Keynes Dons Football Club
Seat EnglandEngland Milton Keynes , Buckinghamshire , England
founding 2004
Board EnglandEngland Pete Winkelman
Website mkdons.com
First soccer team
Head coach ScotlandScotland Russell Martin
Venue Stadium MK
Places 30,500
league EFL League One
2019/20 19th place
home
Away
Alternatively

Milton Keynes Dons (officially: Milton Keynes Dons Football Club ) - also known as The Dons - is an English football club from Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire that has existed since 2004 . He is regarded by the English football association FA as the official successor to the former club Wimbledon , which was based in south London . The majority of the supporters of Wimbledon FC refused to support the move and founded their own club with the AFC Wimbledon .

history

Logo of the old Wimbledon FC

The predecessor club Wimbledon FC, founded in 1889, was accepted into the Football League in 1977. The greatest success was winning the FA Cup on May 14, 1988 with a 1-0 final victory over Liverpool FC . In addition, the Amateur Cup was won in 1963. The record attendance of 30,115 visitors in the Premier League game against Manchester United on May 9, 1993 also dates back to the time when Wimbledon FC.

The Milton Keynes Dons story began in the late 1990s when music business-based entrepreneur and ambitious city sponsor Pete Winkelman wanted to set up a top football club in Milton Keynes. The city already had a club with Milton Keynes City that played in the Spartan South Midlands League , an eighth division in English football. Winkelman did not pursue the strategy of making targeted investments to help this existing club to progress in sport. In contrast to, for example, Max Briggs , owner of Dr. Martens , who, when he founded the neighboring club Rushden & Diamonds through a merger, relied on existing structures, Winkelman planned the construction of a large, state-of-the-art stadium complex that would meet FIFA's standards. The possibility of financing seemed favorable, as the construction of a nearby ASDA and Ikea store along with a main railway station in the city was planned in a larger advertising campaign . Suspecting that possible donors would not want to fund the stadium for a moderately popular amateur team, he began looking for a professional club from another city that was ready to move to Milton Keynes.

Since 1998 he made the clubs an offer to move, which were mostly in financial difficulties. However, successively the clubs FC Barnet , Luton Town and the Queens Park Rangers rejected his offer. FC Wimbledon, on the other hand, which had already been located outside of home for a few years, was then to become Winkelman's preferred property. He convinced Wimbledon's club management that a new start could be achieved with a move. On May 28, 2002, the FA accepted the move to Milton Keynes, despite general public rejection (but especially among supporters of Wimbledon FC). Fifteen months later, the move was completed for the club, which had amassed £ 20m in debt and was going into bankruptcy .

In the 2003/04 season the club was taken care of by a bankruptcy administrator and some of the best players had to be sold. The club then rose after a weak season in the Football League One (formerly Second Division ). In the summer of 2003, Winkelman financed the conversion of the National Hockey Stadium into a football stadium, which resulted in Wimbledon FC's relocation to the new stadium in September 2003. In the spring of 2004, the association had settled its debts after the bankruptcy proceedings ended and reduced its purchase value to such an extent that Winkelman now bought the association.

Name change

Although the FA had issued a different recommendation in an independent commission, Winkelman announced in June 2004 that Wimbledon would now change its name to Milton Keynes Dons , having previously promised to take into account the majority opinion of its own supporters. Although the official fan club voted unanimously to keep the name "Wimbledon", Winkelman ignored this and only added the addition "Dons" (and not just as a nickname of the club), which should recognize the club's history of Wimbledon accordingly. When the club reappeared from bankruptcy on July 1 with the new owner, Winkelman also decided, in this case without prior consultation, to introduce new club colors. In the club badges, MMIV also indicates the time the club was founded. One indication of Winkelman's original intentions may also be the fact that he had the Internet domain MKDONS.COM registered as early as 2000.

Acknowledgment of the fan club

On June 5, 2005, the MK Dons Supporters Club was again denied admission to the national association of fan clubs Football Supporters' Federation (FSF) with 98 votes to 44. An approximation is generally believed to be possible if two demands made by the FSF are implemented, but the fulfillment of which is beyond the power of the Milton Keynes Dons fan club:

  • The honors and historical relics of Wimbledon FC must be handed over to the city of Wimbledon in full, including , above all, the replica of the FA Cup won in 1988 against Liverpool FC .
  • The FA's statutes have to be changed so that in future clubs will be forbidden from leaving their traditional homeland in order to later continue operations elsewhere (which would make the case of Wimbledon FC a one-time exception).

New stadium

In February 2005, the club began building a new arena in Denbigh North . The new complex called Stadium: mk connects a stadium with currently 22,000 seats (expandable with full seating to a maximum of 32,000 seats by using the upper tier) and the Halle Arena: mk with 5,000 seats, in which the Milton Keynes Lions basketball team is currently playing their home games unsubscribes. The stadium, which meets the UEFA 4-star specification , was inaugurated by Elisabeth II in November 2007 .

Training ground

The club currently uses the public sports facilities in the village of Woughton on the Green for its training sessions . The youth teams also play their home games there. At the end of the 2004/05 season, new artificial turf was laid ( called The Bubble ). In addition, the club would like to rebuild the area around the National Bowl in order to have a highly professional training area in the future.

Sporting development

The club found itself mostly in the relegation zone in the 2004/05 season (League One) and dismissed coach Stuart Murdoch in November 2004 after a series of poor results. He was replaced by former Bristol City coach Danny Wilson , whose only job was to stay up. Wilson was able to stabilize the team's performance, especially at home games, and was now six points behind a relegation zone. Another form crisis then ensured that the Dons could only prevent relegation due to a better goal difference in front of Torquay United .

The 2005/06 season ended the Dons as 22nd, which they had to relegate to the Football League Two (fourth highest division). A season later they finished fourth in League Two and thus qualified for the playoffs, but failed in the semi-finals after a 0-0 away and a 1-2 home defeat at seventh Shrewsbury Town . In the 2007/08 season, the club finally made it back to the Football League One with first place .

In 2015, they were promoted to the Football League Championship , from which the team was immediately relegated as the penultimate. In 2018 MK Dons was relegated to the fourth-rate EFL League Two.

League affiliation

Web links