Enough of this small time stuff, don't you have a nothing league thread you can go and talk in?

Ballon D'or is coming up. Out of Messi, Ronaldo and Iniesta for me. Would be nice to see Iniesta get it as he was class for Spain and it would show recognition team contribution, rather than the all out production the big two have. Still, any of them deserve it so it won't be a surprise. Just goes to show you how good some players have been if Xavi has never won one, despite his awesomeness.

Don't you have a "Go **** yourself" thread to go and talk in?

Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party here, but...



Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I love it.



Manufactured? How do you work that out? I'd say moving a football club to a completely different city, giving it a completely different identity and creating a completely new fan base is manufactured. Did you know Milton Keynes already had a football club? Did you ever support them? Or were the fact that they were a non-league club not appeal to you?

The fact that anyone falls for MK being the "real" Wimbledon and thinks AFC Wimbledon fans refusing to follow an uprooted football club is "abandoning" anything is beyond me. What would your opinion be if they'd moved to Dublin as first planned? Of course no one wanted anything to do with the club when moved - it was the death of the original Wimbledon. Simple as that.

The fact that MK have now willingly given up Wimbledon's history to the Borough of Merton should speak volumes. If people want to follow a manufactured club in Milton Keynes, that's up to them. But to be upset that Wimbledon fans are bitter about the move and claim to have more right to their history than AFC shows a complete lack of understanding of the situation. Mind you, you've admitted you were never a Wimbledon fan in the first place, so there's no real surprise there.



You've missed the whole outcry about that, then?



You're comparing clubs formed as works teams, church-based sides and so on changing because they now represented a larger area or entire city, two centuries ago, when the game itself was changing dramatically, to moving a long-established club that represented one area of the country to a completely new area with which they have no connection?

By the way, before you ask, Salford City and FC United as I love what they're doing in the community because, yes, United have long sinced abandoned theirs. Not in 1902 as you'd have everyone believe, though.



Because football doesn't exist outside of the Premiership ffs.

Man United moved 7 miles across Manchester from Newton Heath to Old Trafford. Arsenal moved 11 miles across London.

Arsenal and Man United made those decisions because they suited themselves.

Milton Keynes wanted a football team, weren't prepared to work their way through the divisions to earn their way, so instead decided to go the American route and stole the league position from Wimbledon instead.

English football fans know that was wrong, so the resentment over it still lingers.

You might claim the moves of Arsenal and Man United are the same, you might claim that Chelsea and Liverpool being created because there were available grounds as the same, but every other football supporter knows that is complete and utter BS. You might be able to ignore the stink, other people can't.

Arsenal bribing their way to the top division instead of Spurs is perhaps the only other comparable act. Arsenal benefit from time eroding their guilt. You don't.

Simple fact is that football clubs (and most other sports teams) represent a town, or community.....That is how most teams were formed in the first place and that is why the idea of basically buying a club and moving it 60 miles away is such an absurd one.

Yes, modern football/sport is a business, but the roots of that business are still buried deep in the towns/communities that they are representing.....Kits will be changed and clubs will move stadiums in order to improve their business chances, but ultimately the fans stay the same and that is where MK Dons fail the test, because sticking two fingers up at a club's fanbase was the ultimate betrayal.

For more suitable eqivalent for Northampton Saint - What if St Helens RLFC suddenly get into deep financial trouble, their on field performances slip and support begins to dip??.....What if a potential saviour comes in and decides that he will buy the club, but will move them to Newcastle or Cardiff because he feels its a huge business opportunity??

I'm guessing you and 99% of Saints present fans would be up in arms about it.....Look at the reaction of most RL fans in the 90's, when mergers were proposed then, people were appalled at the idea of THEIR club being stolen from them - Its a similar thing to what has happened with MK Dons/Wimbledon, it was the theft of a club, no more, no less.

....*sigh*

I've already covered all of the above in the previous 4 or so pages and am bored of saying the same things to ears that are unwilling to listen. A quick precis if you can't be mythered reading back thoroughly and getting an education:

1. The way MK was formed was more than a little suspicious and more than a bit dodgy. I agree totally and was opposed to it happening at the time.

2. I still have yet to hear an argument suggesting what differently anyone would have done in the same position as Wimbledon FC's management.

3. Most Wimbledon fans had every reason to get upset about it and I thoroughly sympathise and empathise having gone through a far worse fate as a Diamonds fan just over a year ago.

4. Most Wimbledon fans never even attempted to save their club when they had the opportunity (impractical as doing so may or may not have been) and took the easier route of abandoning it to it's fate to support a new club lacking all the baggage that the old club was lumbered with.

5. Most Wimbledon fans lost the basic right to complain about whatever eventually happened to their old club as a result. If you throw something away in the trash then you no longer own it and can't complain when someone else takes it out of the trash and does whatever they feel like doing with it.

6. Having established that MK's formation was more than a little questionable, it's roots as a club are mired in no more sinky ground than at least half of the all the clubs in the entire football leagues. You might like to all kid yourselves that football clubs were all created to be no more than benevolent community fostering hostels with flower-lined drives and soup kitchens on tap run by Santa Claus, BUT THAT IS SIMPLY NOT THE CASE!!!

7. Attempts to argue that the profit-centric, fan-ignoring, sharp business practices of the Arsenals, Man Utds, Liverpools, Chelseas etc. etc. in the past, present and future is in any way, shape or form different or better than what MK have done is just simply LAUGHABLE....

8. Arsenal and Man Utd may have only moved 10/15 miles, but that was a far, far greater distance to have to overcome for the average working man of the day that had loyally supported his local club through thick and thin and then got royally shafted by them than a 60 minute drive up the M25/M1 is now.

9. We stuck the veritable fingers up at AFC Kingston only after they'd done the same to us for 3 years - don't let the angry revisionist history mongers of West London pretend otherwise...

10. Cardiff City are not boycotted by two-faced supporters groups, abused by opposition supporters and constantly condemned in the media at every available turn...

11. I was a season ticket holder at a non-league club for several years and loved it - if my club hadn't ceased to exist I'd still be there very happily now. I didn't choose to start supporting MK - it chose me.

12. Whatever their history, MK NOW are one of the friendliest, most open, most fan-centric and community-based clubs in the whole of football. The management (whatever the actual reality) treats us as valued and beloved partners in their grand project, not as some petty cash cow that can either shut the **** up and keep pumping our hard-earned into their coffers, or **** off somewhere else a la pretty much any PL club. Having sampled the MK experience as an initially dubious and semi-brainwashed punter just the same as you lot, I now frankly wouldn't swap my MK ticket for that of any other club on earth. We're better than you are and you know it really deep down

This gets better and better

According to you, Wigan Athletic have changed their colours because occasionally there has been wgite, green and/or black with the main colour of blue. When asked if teams such as Arsenal or Man Utd, who both have different colours on their shirt this year as well as red, have done tje same you say you have never claimed such. Fantastic. Next you'll be telling me Harry Redknapp is a good manager and Liverpool are still the biggest club in England.

Whatever... I have better things to do with my life than squabble with a clueless child of a Wigan fan over pointless minutiae. You ain't worth the banging of head on wall frankly. You support a club that has abandoned it's identity for a quick buck many, many times in the past and has 20,000 "lifelong", "dedicated", "passionate" "fans" that have mysteriously and magically all somehow appeared out of the woodwork in just the last 10 years. Your club has no history, no soul and is a manufactured, money-making, franchise entity with a plastic, Johnny-Come-Lately, Glory-hunting supporter base. And you think you're in a position to condemn MK for the same?



Hah.

We have 80 years of history thank you. MK Dons have 8.