Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
Milton Keynes Dons Football Club, usually abbreviated to MK Dons, is a professional association football club based in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. The team competes in EFL League Two, the fourth level of the English football league system. The club was founded in 2004, following Wimbledon F.C.'s controversial relocation to Milton Keynes from south London, when it adopted its present name, badge and home colours.
Initially based at the National Hockey Stadium, the club competed as Milton Keynes Dons from the start of the 2004–05 season. The club moved to their current ground, Stadium MK, for the 2007–08 season, in which they won the League Two title and the Football League Trophy. After seven further seasons in League One, the club won promotion to the Championship in 2015 under the management of Karl Robinson; however, they were relegated back to League One after one season.
Milton Keynes Dons have built a reputation for youth development, run 16 disability teams and their football trust engages around 60,000 people; between 2012 and 2013 the club produced 11 young players who have been called into age group national teams and between 2004 and 2014 the club also gave first-team debuts to 14 local academy graduates, including the England international midfielder Dele Alli.
The club also operates a women's team, Milton Keynes Dons Women, who groundshare Stadium MK with their male counterparts, and currently play in the third tier of the English women's football pyramid.
Origins
, about north-west of London in Buckinghamshire, was established as a new town in 1967. In the absence of a professional football club representing the town—none of the local non-league teams progressed significantly through the English football league system or "pyramid" over the following decades—it was occasionally suggested that a Football League club might relocate there. There was no precedent in English league football for such a move between conurbations and the football authorities and most fans expressed strong opposition to the idea. Charlton Athletic briefly mooted moving to "a progressive Midlands borough" during a planning dispute with their local council in 1973, and the relocation of nearby Luton Town to Milton Keynes was repeatedly suggested from the 1980s onwards. Another team linked with the new town was Wimbledon Football Club.Wimbledon, established in south London in 1889 and nicknamed "the Dons", were elected to the Football League in 1977. They thereafter went through a "fairytale" rise from obscurity and by the end of the 1980s were established in the top division of English football, as well as winning the 1988 FA Cup final. Despite Wimbledon's new prominence, the club's modest home stadium at Plough Lane remained largely unchanged from its non-league days. The club's then-owner Ron Noades identified this as a problem as early as 1979, extending his dissatisfaction to the ground's very location. Interested in the stadium site designated by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, Noades briefly planned to move Wimbledon there by merging with a non-league club in Milton Keynes, and bought debt-ridden Milton Keynes City. However, Noades then decided that the club would not gain sufficient support in Milton Keynes and abandoned the idea.
In 1991, after the Taylor Report was published recommending the redevelopment of English football grounds, Wimbledon left Plough Lane to groundshare at Crystal Palace's ground, Selhurst Park, about away. Sam Hammam, who then owned Wimbledon, said the club could not afford to redevelop Plough Lane and that the groundshare was a temporary arrangement while a new ground was sourced in south-west London. A new stadium for Wimbledon proved difficult to achieve. Frustrated by what he perceived as a lack of support from Merton Council, Hammam began to look further afield and by 1996 was pursuing a move to Dublin, an idea that most Wimbledon fans strongly opposed. Hammam sold the club to two Norwegian businessmen, Kjell Inge Røkke and Bjørn Rune Gjelsten, in 1997, and a year later sold Plough Lane to Safeway supermarkets. Wimbledon were relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 1999–2000 season.
Starting in 1997, a consortium led by music promoter Pete Winkelman and supported by Asda and IKEA proposed a large retail development in Milton Keynes including a Football League-standard stadium. The consortium originally proposed that the stadium be located at the National Bowl but later altered their proposal to change the site of the proposed stadium to Denbigh North, the same site as the mooted retail development.
The consortium proposed that an established league club move to use this site; it approached Luton, Wimbledon, Crystal Palace, Barnet, and Queens Park Rangers. In 2001, Røkke and Gjelsten appointed a new chairman, Charles Koppel, who was in favour of this idea, saying it was necessary to stop the club going out of business. To the fury of most Wimbledon fans, Koppel announced on 2 August 2001 that the club intended to relocate to Milton Keynes. After the Football League refused permission, Wimbledon launched an appeal, leading to a Football Association arbitration hearing and subsequently the appointment of a three-man independent commission to make a final and binding verdict. The league and FA stated opposition but the commissioners ruled in favour, two to one, on 28 May 2002.
Having campaigned against the move, a group of disaffected Wimbledon fans reacted to this in June 2002 by forming their own non-league club, AFC Wimbledon, to which most of the original team's support defected. AFC Wimbledon entered a groundshare agreement with Kingstonian in the borough of Kingston upon Thames, adjacent to Merton. The original Wimbledon intended to move to Milton Keynes immediately but were unable to do so until a temporary home in the town meeting Football League criteria could be found. The club remained at Selhurst Park in the meantime and in June 2003 went into administration. With the move threatened and the club facing liquidation, Winkelman decided to buy it himself. He secured funding for the administrators to keep the team operating with the goal of getting it to Milton Keynes as soon as possible. The club arranged the temporary use of the National Hockey Stadium in Milton Keynes and played its first match there in September 2003. Nine months later, Winkelman's Inter MK Group bought the club out of administration and announced changes to its name, badge and colours—the team was renamed Milton Keynes Dons Football Club.
History
2004–2006: Struggles and relegation
The first season for the club as Milton Keynes Dons was 2004–05, in Football League One, under Stuart Murdoch, who had managed Wimbledon F.C. since 2002. The team's first game was on 7 August 2004, a 1–1 home draw against Barnsley, with Izale McLeod equalising with their first competitive goal. Murdoch was sacked in November and replaced by Danny Wilson, who kept Milton Keynes Dons in the division on the final day of the season — largely due to Wrexham's 10-point deduction for going into administration. The following season, Milton Keynes Dons struggled all year, and were relegated to League Two; Wilson, as a result, was sacked.2006–2010: Promotion and first silverware
Wilson's successor for 2006–07 was Martin Allen, who had just taken Brentford to the brink of a place in the Football League Championship. Milton Keynes Dons were in contention for automatic promotion right up to the last game of the season, but eventually finished fourth and had to settle for a play-off place. They then suffered a defeat to Shrewsbury Town in the play-off semi-finals. During the 2007 summer break, Allen left to take over at Leicester City.For the 2007–08 season, former England captain Paul Ince took over as manager. Milton Keynes Dons reached the final of the Football League Trophy, while topping the table for most of the season. The final was played on 30 March 2008 against Grimsby Town — Milton Keynes Dons won 2–0 at Wembley to bring the first professional trophy to Milton Keynes. The club capped the trophy win with the League Two championship, and the subsequent promotion to League One. Following his successes, Ince left at the end of the season to manage Blackburn Rovers.
Ince's replacement was former Chelsea player Roberto Di Matteo, taking his first role as a manager. In the 2008–09 season, they missed out on an automatic promotion spot by two points, finishing third behind Peterborough United and Leicester City. They were knocked out of the play-offs by Scunthorpe United, who defeated MK Dons by penalty shootout at Stadium MK. Di Matteo left at the season's end for West Bromwich Albion. A year after leaving, Ince returned as manager for the 2009–10 season. He resigned from the club on 16 April 2010, but remained manager until the end of the season.
2010–2016: Karl Robinson era
On 10 May 2010, Karl Robinson was appointed as the club's new manager, with former England coach John Gorman as his assistant. At 29 years of age, Robinson was at the time of his appointment the youngest manager in the Football League. In his first season in the club Milton Keynes Dons finished fifth in 2010–11 League One. They faced Peterborough United in the play-off semifinals. Although they won the first leg 2–1, a 2–0 defeat at London Road meant they missed out on the play-off final, losing the Semi-Final 3–2 on aggregate goals.The 2011–12 season brought similar results to the previous season with the Dons finishing fifth in 2011–12 League One facing Huddersfield in the play-offs. Losing the first leg 2–0 followed by winning 2–1 at The Galpharm saw Milton Keynes Dons lose 3–2 on aggregate against the eventual play-off winners. The away leg was John Gorman's last match in football after announcing his retirement a few weeks beforehand. Gorman's replacement was announced on 18 May 2012 as being ex-Luton manager Mick Harford along with new part-time coach Ian Wright.
Milton Keynes Dons experienced their best ever FA Cup campaign in the 2012–13 season by beating a spirited Cambridge City, League Two fierce rivals AFC Wimbledon, Championship Sheffield Wednesday and Premier League Queens Park Rangers to reach the fifth round of the competition for the first time in their history. Their record-breaking run ended in the fifth round at Stadium MK on 16 February 2013, losing 3–1 to Championship side Barnsley. After being in the top five for most of the season, the club finished the 2013–14 League One season in tenth place.
The 2014–15 season began well. The highlight event of the season's first month was being drawn against Manchester United in the League Cup second round, having dispatched AFC Wimbledon in the first. The Dons recorded a shock 4–0 victory over Manchester United in front of a sell out crowd at Stadium MK. A few weeks later, the Dons recorded their record win, a 6–0 thrashing of Colchester United at home. That record did not last long as it was broken once again with a 7–0 demolition of Oldham Athletic on 20 December 2014. Just over a month later, on 31 January 2015, the Dons recorded a joint record 5–0 away win against Crewe Alexandra, earning a short-lived top spot. On 3 May the club secured promotion to the Football League Championship for the first time, beating Yeovil Town 5–1 and leapfrogging Preston North End on the final day of the season.
The Dons started life in the Championship by beating Rotherham United away 4–1 on the opening day of the season and gaining seven points from a possible 12 in their first four games. They were not able to sustain this form throughout the season – the Dons did not win any of their final 11 games and they returned to League One after finishing 23rd in the Championship.
On 23 October 2016, Karl Robinson left the club by mutual consent, following a 3–0 home defeat by Southend United the previous day, which had extended the Dons' winless run to four games and left them 19th in the League One table.