For a number of years, there’s been disagreements among the AFC Wimbledon fanbase around the best way forward for the club in terms of ownership.
Conservatists, extremely understandably, are very cautious about letting anyone from outside the immediate Wimbledon family in for a stake at the club, even a minority share.
They saw what happened to the club in 1991, when Sam Hammam used the Taylor Report as an excuse to leave Plough Lane, unnecessarily, to ground share with Crystal Palace, and then sell the stadium site to David Wilson Homes to build a block of flats with 11 years later.
They saw what happened in 2002, when Pete Winkelman moved the league place to Milton Keynes, forcing the fans to create a new PLC, and ensure the existence of a club that captures the heart and essence of Wimbledon FC.
Because of the scale of the subsequent achievements, with AFC Wimbledon taking just nine years to get back in the league from restarting with open trials on Wimbledon Common for a season in the Combined Counties, there’s a lot of pride around what has been achieved, and therefore confidence in what can be, as an exclusively fan-owned club.
As such, greetings of interested outsiders may be laced with skepticism in some quarters: and perhaps rightly so, because history has taught the fanbase that a bit of skepticism can come in handy.
There’s a belief from some that 100% fan ownership, indefinitely, is the only way to absolutely guarantee avoiding the club’s existence from ever being put under threat again.
Those of a more ambitious persuasion, however, would question how far the club can go under fan ownership.
The club, under it’s current PLC, has had seven seasons at this level, and never finished higher than 15th in their first attempt in 2016-17, and never managed more than the 57 points accumulated that year.
Ok, technically, we’ll call it six seasons because 2019-20 ended early for COVID with the Dons on 35 points, but we’ll have to consider it unlikely they would have got more than 22 points from the last 11 games! Sorry, Glyn.
It’s an average finishing position of 19th, and an average points return (excluding 2019-20) of 50.
You could argue that, in that time, the club has got stronger as a structural entity with Craig Cope’s work as Director of Football helping them get a bit smarter as a club and find value for money.
AFC Wimbledon moved to the Cherry Red Records Stadium, approximately 200 yards east from their old stadium at Plough Lane, in 2020
At the same time, the financial climate of the league has changed. When Wimbledon first came up to the level in 2016, Burton Albion had just won promotion, Rochdale were top half regulars, Walsall were a midtable side, all without notable backing… so as a division, it was much closer to League Two than to the Championship.
Whereas, the current iteration of League One is much more demanding. As more and more money gets pumped into the Premier League, players drop down thinking they can demand more, and costs inflate because clubs want to compete rather than be left behind.
Nowadays, the midtable clubs aren’t Rochdale and Walsall, they’re clubs that have been in the Premier League in the last three years… Leicester and Luton!
Whereas, clubs that had been big hitters at this level previously, like Peterborough, Barnsley and Wigan, are all in the bottom four.
Yes, there are some underdog stories, like Cambridge and Stevenage, but the latter are a fantastic commercial entity that regularly land global sponsorship deals.
So, the level feels much more demanding now, and in the next 10 years, there’s nothing to say that League Two might not follow a similar trajectory, so there’s a real danger that self-sufficient fan-owned clubs, however romantic, however admirable, however likeable, might get squeezed into non-league football.
As such, I think there’s a really strong argument to say that the fanbase needs to be open-minded about bringing people into the club who, starting with the right values, and a willingness to buy into the fabric of the club, and the early signs around the new consortium, Sloane Street Capital, are promising.
Omar Mir, with a background in AI and advanced technology, looks like the money man, with former Chelsea left-back Ryan Bertrand as a prospective Senior Football Advisor, with a few other low-profiled figure lined up for director roles.
Since retiring in 2023, Bertrand has founded fintech brokerage Silicon Markets, and may be keen to bring technological development into the club.
There should be a long, due process between now and a significant minority stake in the club being given up to SSC, with all the required checks in place.
Yet for a small stake, the fact they’re reportedly willing to put £87m into the club across a five-year period is extremely exciting – in theory at least.
Conservatism is understandable, admirable, and to an extent justified.
At some stage, however, you have to be willing to take small, calculated risks in order for the club to be able to continue their journey upwardly and move onto that next level.
