MK Dons are arguably the most hated football club in the UK, after controversially relocating Wimbledon to Milton Keynes in 2004. And they don't care.
Matt Lazenby supported Wimbledon throughout his early life and, when the club upped sticks and moved 50 miles north, he continued his fandom despite the identity change.
“We’re as hated as Millwall have ever been, but that creates a togetherness," Matt Lazenby tells FourFourTwo.
“Every MK Dons fan gets into arguments with other fans about the decisions they’ve made. There is a very loyal fanbase, galvanised by ridicule and disbelief from other supporters who can’t understand we are genuine fans of our club.
“The experience was initially uncomfortable and I took very little pleasure from those early campaigns. It was a hockey stadium not built for football – very weird – but my team were playing there and I wanted to support them. Once the whistle blew, it could have been anywhere.
“It was strange, but what was noticeable fairly quickly was that there were 6,000 or even 8,000 people turning up to watch this new thing in their town. You could instantly feel that there was a market for it – an audience – and that was something that the club hadn’t had for 11 years or so.”
Reflecting on Wimbledon's final few years before becoming MK Dons, Lazenby pinpoints one specific moment as to why, ultimately, what happened had to happen.
“The move to Selhurst Park was the death knell,” Lazenby explains. “Wimbledon had no ability to make revenue other than selling players. What followed was relegation and crowds stopped coming.
“I remember going to Sheffield United away in 2002. There were so few away fans that they closed the away end and put us in a box. An executive box. That says it all. It was me, a few others, and our goalkeeper Kelvin Davis’ mum. We had no fanbase left.
“If I’d been a south-west Londoner, used to walking through Wimbledon to Plough Lane, I would have been really disgruntled – I get that, 100 per cent. But, ever since the move, there’s been a one-sided media agenda in favour of AFC over MK Dons. Just look at the FA Cup. Every year, AFC are said to have won it in 1988. Well, they didn’t. MK Dons did. I resent that we had to renounce those titles.
“I don’t want to see what happened to Wimbledon happen again. It must not be a precedent. But the way it’s viewed – the angels and demons created – is all wrong.”
MK Dons are set to start the 2023/24 season in League Two, following a disappointing relegation to the fourth tier of English football on the final day of the 2022/23 campaign.
While they managed one season in the Championship in 2015/16, they've mostly spent their existence as MK Dons in League One. While their 30,500 capacity Stadium MK competes with Premier League grounds, performances certainly don't, though Lazenby says it's too early to determine MK Dons a failure.
“The biggest disappointment in my football life is watching this team fail to live up to the infrastructure built around it,” laments Lazenby.
“It’s far from a failure, though. We’ve been told for 20 years by other fans that football is all about history – that we have no history, so how could I support them? Twenty years is too short a time to try to claim a history; too short a time to deem this project a failure.”
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