Not the best idea in the world

Pete Winkelman concedes that moving the original Wimbledon Football Club to Milton Keynes was not "the best idea in the world."

This move was something that he feels was necessary to save that club from extinction and he is proud of what MK Dons have achieved since: 'Today I stand here hugely proud of the home we have built for football in Milton Keynes but I am not proud of the way this club came to be, and that is very hard for me to live with.

'It might not have the been the best idea in the world to move a football club, and as the owner and chairman of a football club now, of course, I understand that but the way people imagine how things happened is so different to the way it actually did.

'We did a deal with Norwegian billionaires and when they were going to move the club to Dublin, perhaps we mistakenly gave them Milton Keynes as an option because I naively thought that might be better.

'The administrator said 'I'm going to liquidate this football club tomorrow unless you come up with the money to keep it going'.

'The only way I could come up with the money to keep it going was to move it to Milton Keynes.'

This admission is probably of little comfort to most but it's something?

If nothing else Winkelman feels that the move has seen two positives come from this, MK Dons and AFC Wimbledon who have both been successful in their own right from the divide of the original Wimbledon.

It's also his hope that once this game is out of the way "looking forward instead of back" can become the case for all...

Click here to join in the debate on the club forum.