Home comfort continues to elude AFC Wimbledon at the new Plough Lane but yesterday’s defeat to their nemesis Milton Keynes Dons, keeping them in League One's relegation zone, was a desperate blow that means they are also now searching for a new manager.
Glyn Hodges, the former midfielder who played in all four divisions for the Crazy Gang, was dismissed soon after full-time of a desperate 2-0 loss. The south-west London club displayed precious little fight or character in a fixture that means more than any to many of their supporters and it was decided that a change in the dugout was required with the threat of a first relegation as a fan-owned entity hovering menacingly.
“It is with a genuinely heavy heart that I have to announce that we have parted company with Glyn,” said chief executive Joe Palmer. “We need to do everything to ensure our survival in League One and after a brief chat Glyn and I have agreed that a parting of the ways today is in the best interests of Wimbledon.”
Their fairytale return home 29 years after the original Wimbledon were forced to depart is resembling something far less rosy and there was more fear than loathing inside what some fans, not yet allowed into the ground due to coronavirus, have christened the Poundshop Bombonera yesterday.
It is a smart ground, too. It feels far more vast than the cramped confines of Kingsmeadow but still compact enough for a big racket to be made when fans are eventually allowed to pack in.
For some it is their club’s greatest achievement to date and as Charlie Talbot, vice-chair of the Dons Trust, told football.london, the culmination of the biggest bond raising effort in English football history to ensure construction could be completed.
“Everyone told us that it would be impossible,” Talbot said. "Including the FA and our former owners". Yet here they are with a home that could see them reach a new level thanks to the revenue it could create post-pandemic.
While Talbot personally tries to stay away from games between these two teams, the history of the old Wimbledon's Football League place being redeployed to Milton Keynes still raw, this first meeting at Plough Lane would have been long circled in the calendar by a lot of supporters who continue to bear a grudge.
Both Hodges and his opposite number Russell Martin reminded their squads of this game’s importance in the lead up, although an outsider cannot help but feel the Buckinghamshire club’s attempts at building it up as a derby remain a little hollow.
Separated by 60 miles, this is definitively not a derby. It is barely a rivalry in the traditional sense but the animosity has not dissipated.
“Playing them is an irritating sideshow,” Talbot said, recognising that his view may not be a blanket one across Wimbledon’s fanbase. “This isn’t a derby where you get to take the piss out of the fans and get bragging rights for six months. It’s playing a team that shouldn’t exist and has a stolen league place.
“Most of the time I don’t think about them, I dislike having to think about them because we get to focus on all the positive things we’ve done. But every time we play them you’re reminded they exist when I don’t think they should.”
In a comical act of evasiveness that sums up the tempestuous relationship, Wimbledon referred to MK solely as the visitors on social media throughout the game - having been warned by the FA in 2019 that they must refer to their opponents by their full title having refused to recognise the use of Dons.
When the visitors jogged on to the pitch five minutes before kick-off, there was an eerie silence and it was hard not to consider how much difference this tight ground packed with 9,000 supporters would have made.
“It’s a cruel irony after 29 years of work that the fans who have literally funded and built the stadium are unable to see the team play in it,” Talbot said. “We’re only postponing the party a little longer, maybe the summer, and that will be our moment to celebrate.”
The scale of that jamboree may depend on an upturn in results. Having started the campaign well, they earned just two points in Hodges' final 11 games and since moving into Plough Lane their home record is one win, a draw and five defeats.
Wimbledon started well yesterday, earning three corners in the opening ten minutes, but Martin’s team began to grow in stature and there could be little arguing over the result by the end. Cameron Jerome, at 34 still a problem for third-tier defences, set up both of the away side’s goals two minutes apart around the hour mark - the first finished off by Matt O’Riley and the second from substitute Matt Sorinola following a heavy deflection.
The Wombles' reply was meek, with Hodges remarking afterwards that his players’ heads dropped. He was booked for saying something that offended the fourth official in the final stages and that was his last meaningful act in charge.
Mark Robinson, who used to collect royalties for West End performers before becoming a coach, has been placed in interim charge with his first game away to Oxford in the Papa John's on Tuesday followed by a league trip to Wigan next Saturday. Those immediately above them possess games in hand and MK pulled nine points clear of danger with this result, so Wimbledon's need to start collecting wins is urgent.
For Talbot that was the real story of yesterday, describing it as "a big game because we desperately need three points." It will never be a fixture where wrongs can be made right.
"Them beating us does not vindicate what happened and us beating them is not a vindication of our project," he added. "The vindication of our project is that we kept our club alive when the FA told us not to and we’ve built a stadium down the road from the old ground which the FA and our former owners said was impossible.”
Staying in the division, by comparison, seems a far more achievable task.
