This article is about the club from Milton Keynes, formed under this name in 2004. For its origins, see and. Milton Keynes Dons Football Club , usually abbreviated to MK Dons, is a professional club based in , , England. It was founded in 2004, following 's controversial from south London, when it adopted its present name, badge and home colours. The club currently competes in , the fourth tier of the , following relegation from at the end of the season. Milton Keynes Dons Full name Milton Keynes Dons Football Club Nickname s The Dons Short name MK Dons Founded Ground Capacity 30,500 Chairman Manager League , 23rd of 24 relegated Website Initially based at the , the club competed as Milton Keynes Dons from the start of the season. After two seasons in League One, it was to League Two in 2006. The club moved to its current ground, , for the season, in which it won the League Two title and the under the management of. After seven further seasons in League One, the club won promotion to the in 2015 under the management of ; however, it was relegated back to League One after one season. Milton Keynes Dons have built a reputation for youth development , run 16 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 gave first-team debuts to 14 local academy graduates, including the midfielder. Locations of , and , about 45 miles 72 km north-west of London in , was established as a in 1967. There was no precedent in English league football for such a move between and the football authorities and most fans expressed strong opposition to the idea. Another team linked with the new town was. Despite Wimbledon's new prominence, the club's modest home stadium at remained largely unchanged from its non-league days. The club's then-owner 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 , Noades briefly planned to move Wimbledon there by merging with a non-league club in Milton Keynes, purchasing debt-ridden. However Noades then decided that the club would not gain sufficient support in Milton Keynes as the population was still low still being under construction, abandoning the idea. In 1991, after the was published recommending the redevelopment of English football grounds, Wimbledon left Plough Lane to at 's ground, , about 6 miles 9. A new stadium for Wimbledon proved difficult to achieve. Frustrated by what he perceived as a lack of support from , Hammam began to look further afield and by 1996 was pursuing a move to , an idea that most Wimbledon fans strongly opposed. Hammam sold the club to two Norwegian businessmen, and , in 1997, and a year later sold Plough Lane to supermarkets. Wimbledon were from the at the end of the season. The consortium proposed that an established league club move to use this site; it approached Luton, Wimbledon, Crystal Palace, and. 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. After the Football League refused permission, Wimbledon launched an appeal, leading to a 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, , to which most of the original team's support defected. AFC Wimbledon entered a groundshare agreement with in the borough of , 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. 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 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. Milton Keynes D
