THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

Pete,

You built the dream… and you broke it.

You brought this football team to Milton Keynes 20 years ago. You promised Premier League football, and to be fair, I think anyone who has at least two brain cells knows that such a promise was fanciful. But at the start, we appreciated the ambition.

We had some bloody good years, especially with Karl. Watch and learn, Pete: Karl and Andy Cullen got this club and the fans more than you ever did - or at least more than you could be bothered to do. They were the two people you employed that understood how to connect with fans, and not just poke their head out of the woodwork when Jonathan Park and BBC Look East came to town and you had a chance to get on the telly.

At that point, around ten years ago, you had a large fanbase that was strongly emotionally engaged with the club. The Championship season didn’t work out, but most right-thinking people can understand that on-pitch matters can go wrong. And similarly, good and bad decisions can be made in terms of the team: for every Robbie Neilson and Graham Alexander, there’s a Scott Twine and a Rhys Healey. That’s how lower-league football works. As fans, we understand that, in the main.

But look at where we are now: off the pitch, just as much as on.

Let’s be honest: you haven’t given a flying fuck for a good six or seven years now. Cutting back on the matchday experience with shit beer at London prices served by agency staff who barely know what day it is. But that’s OK: as I understand you told one connected fan: “it’s a football ground, what do you expect?”

For the biggest game of the season, shutting stands people have sat in for many years, where they’ve made bonds with each other - and allowing other season ticket holders to have their seats sold from under them before they had the chance to buy the tickets themselves. One fan said he might never see an elderly fan ever again because of that decision. These are people who have become friends over many years - but you don’t give a fuck, as long as you can save a couple of hundred quid on stewarding.

The way you have treated loyal and passionate fans is fucking disgusting. I’ve done more to promote this club than you ever have. I wrote the programme for Dean Lewington’s testimonial in 2014 (in association with Lee Scriven, who did a superb job to help) - I note how my mum and I were completely blanked by everyone in Club Platinum that day, but that wasn’t unexpected. I raised more than £4000 for Willen Hospice along with a very passionate group of fans in 2016 when we walked to Fulham. Me and Alby of this parish had the initial idea of Orange4Lewie. I spent £600 to go on the team bus to Brentford when I was Skint Eastwood.

These are just a few of many of the things I’ve done over the years to promote YOUR club.

And yet you don’t even know who I am, and you don’t want to know who I am. You don’t give a shit about me, or the hundreds of people who care a million times more about this club than you ever will. I wonder why any of us fucking bother.

You think we’re the ‘great unwashed’ beneath you. There are countless people who have tried to engage with ‘your’ club - and it is ‘your’ club, not ‘ours’ - and met constant resistance at every turn. We want to further the club more than you do. People who had their phones hacked. People who ended up physically ill because of the stress of dealing with your employees.

The very demographic (young MK natives without any memory of the move) that you want to attract after all these years have formed a group called DonsAction. And yet they’re so pissed off with you that (one recent meeting aside) they can’t even be bothered to engage with you.

They’re good, loyal, hard-working fans who have realised that trying to work with you is like farting against thunder. They’ve realised that you don’t care about them, so they don’t care about you. The #DonYourWhite campaign on Saturday showed the strength of feeling - your club got massively shown up by volunteers who care more about it than you ever have.

A lot of this negativity would have been avoided if you’d just been straight with people. No nonsense, no hype, no bullshit: just tell people what’s going on. Football fans want transparency and you’ve given us fuck all. Just the usual fans forum platitudes.

And look at the recruitment policy off-pitch. For fuck’s sake, you’re apparently trying to recruit a new CEO on £55,000 a year. I earn more than that living on a narrowboat writing blogs for a living. Do you honestly expect to get anyone who knows what they’re doing for that kind of money? Ten years ago, I interviewed for a job on your media team paying £20k… not getting that job is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Ultimately, you’ve completely failed at running a football club. You haven’t brought in enough fans for entirely avoidable reasons. You’ve failed to make the right decisions at the right times. But worst of all, you’ve actively gone out of your way to disenfranchise (no pun intended) the very people who might actually want to help you drive engagement.

Supporting MK Dons has changed my life for the better. Four of my very best friends have been made out of being Dons fans. I’m best man for one of them later this year, and we’re going to the Euros for the stag do. You don’t understand these relationships, and it’s achingly clear you don’t want to understand them, either.

All of the above has absolutely nothing to do with the move, or how the Dons came to be in Milton Keynes. It has everything to do with your corporate, cold, aloof, arrogant and condescending way of running a football club.

I hope that ivory tower up there, sitting in front of a whole tier of empty that you voluntarily closed, was worth it while you watched us ship five at home to Crawley across the ‘TV arc’.

You built the dream… and you broke it.

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It's Pete's train set, and we should all feel honoured to be granted the privilege of paying to play with it.

"Shut the fuck up, you sausage!"

My dad doesn't want to go any more, and given that I've spent most of my life going to football games with him, it really hurts. He was sold his season ticket seat for the playoffs and didn't realise until just before kickoff, that he actually hadn't. He'd been sold somewhere else. He said it's partly his fault for not checking the ticket days before - but I'll defend him because he's too modest. He shouldn't fucking need to when he was told by the club he's got his season ticket seat.

A man who within the next few months will be undergoing a third major hip operation, had to walk down to over mid way down the stand to find his seat. Knackered and wound up after doing his best to get up for it over a few days, he witnessed that performance. The performance, he can take. The result he can take. "That is football for you" is a phrase he's drilled into me from a young age. Relegation, losses etc he can take. "That's foorball."
He walked to the top again at half time to go to the toilet, and made his seat again for the second half, deluding himself like a lot of us that anything can happen. He made his mind up that he was done after 10 minutes and struggled back up half a stand to go back to the car and we went home.
Half a stand doesn't sound like a lot, but I've watched my dad's disability get to the worst of him since I was a young boy. He's approaching his elderly years, and a once fit man has had a bit of pride knocked out of him throughout these struggles. He sits on the back row for a fucking reason. That mishap on his ticket was all the indication we needed that this club, and PW don't give a flying fuck about the fans. Or, as AFCW like to call us, "customers." If we're customers, we're being treated like utter fucking dogshit.

His blue badge, and anyone else with one isn't sufficient cover for parking. He can only park in one spot because of his mobility issues. Its a fucking insult. The two wisest decisions he made was arriving 2 hours early so he can keep an eye on the predictably shambles of a queing system we operate for big games, so he didn't have to stand for very long. The other one was leaving before the hour mark.

At first I supported shutting the stands, but it became apparent to me over the last few weeks how wrong I was. I stand by some of what I said but I was educated to why it was a farce and I'll hold my hands up there. Seeing my old man, upset about how he's treated - not caring about the game because "that's football" is what's really upset me. 15 years of watching games with my dad is being fucking ruined by YOU, Pete Winkelman, and your idiotic mates and your moronic decisions. Not the football games. As well as what you've done to countless others. For a man with mobility issues himself, I'd think you'd understand if/when you rrwd this that small inconveniences like this to someone like me, fit and mobile, are week ruining situations to someone like my dad. There was nowhere else to sit. All the seats were filled because you shut half the stadium. He was sore today, too sore to even cook a meal so got a takeaway. Because, despite the ticket office staff being great recently (I mentioned elsewhere it's the best interaction we have with the club) they fucked uo because they're probably too fucking confused by your stupid and moronic decision making, mistakes are bound to happen when they're in difficult situations.

Thanks for reading, and go fuck yourself.

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"It's not about hoping this little moment will change our momentum, its about our daily actions and courage in everything we do.. We've got to stop believing in fairytales"

- Graham Alexander, October 2023

Also, great GREAT fucking post. A bit of me, that.

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"It's not about hoping this little moment will change our momentum, its about our daily actions and courage in everything we do.. We've got to stop believing in fairytales"

- Graham Alexander, October 2023

Says it all. A major disconnect with the fans happened in the playoffs. Stop moving fans around like puppets, take care of your vulnerable fans and serious engage with the younger ones or take a back seat and get someones else in who can. After all you deserve your retirement and you can sit back watching the new generation take it forward.

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Disclaimer: All my comments are my opinions unless stated otherwise. I'm just a fan following my club.

If you want a physical season ticket next season you'll have to pay an additional £5 on top of your normal ticket price. Why? If you're a blue badge holder you still have to pay to park at the stadium. Why? I'll tell you why. Greed. In fact it's more than greed, it's tone deaf greed.

In the grand scheme of life in general, it's nothing, but it's yet another example of how much the club either don't listen or care about fans.

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For those that like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.

In the “White Paper” they bought out…….a box ticking exercise……they stated……Blue Badge holders will not be charged for parking……but with the print not even dry …….they started charging for Blue Badge parking……only after complaints did they halve it…….but they went against their word and the collective decision of those that worked on the White Paper. There’s one for the SB or the SA to tackle.

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Read the MELTDOWN after every game, no bullshit, just giving it straight

Fucking wankers the lot of them, fully agreed.

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#DonsAreShite

Stadium MK is always SHITE in the Playoffs

I said don't go not cause I didn't want people to support the team, but because I don't want people to support the regime. Even if the dickhead reads this (which he won't) it wouldn't make a bean of difference as people have said before. Do you know what will the collective going to the next fans forum and give him, Sweeting, Cove, Williamson and everyone else who will be there the biggest amount of anger ever. Make them feel uncomfortable. Make them feel like they have let us all down. Tell him what you all think of him. Accepting mediocrity will allow them to take the piss time and time again as he will never think there is anything wrong. Revolutions were not started by people sitting on their hands. He will be counting the gate receipts today of a "successful" day on Saturday. His success is getting 10K through the door cause he knows that the blind sheep will flood in when there is something to bother with which means his and his cronies wallets get fatter and fatter. I mean you would think that would show him what can be done if he and them put a little bit more effort in to the club, people would come back. Look I am not saying abandon forever, but last Saturday was the ideal game to show him and the sky cameras that yes we finished 4th, but by being very lucky all season (face facts we were utter shit for most of it and I can count on one hand and the thumb on my other the games we deserved to win).

Reading Alby's words resonated with me as I know what it is like to have a disabled parent who struggles and how said parent (on my side at least) feels on the fringes of society cause of his disability and is pretty much house bound and I am guessing Alby's dad would probably use football as a form of escape for 90 minutes, but couldn't do that cause of some ham fisted idea that the atmosphere would be better. Well that well ran dry after 3 minutes cause we have players who don't care or are not able to do it (face it two of our three CBs are now free agents, why would they have given a shit and the other is Tucker. One of the worst CB we have had at our club). Atmosphere is created by being successful on the pitch, not in the stands.

It's time we stood up for ourselves. As I said before I could list the clubs that have gone through not only shit owners, but shit times too. Coventry, Luton, Pompy, Ipswich, Bolton and there are probably others. They are now in a much better and much successful position than us. Please think long and hard over the summer. It was a club the City didn't want it is quite clear by how little the city get involved. I have had one club die due to owners not listening to fans and it looks like there is another one about to happen and that is what the football world (and Winkelman) wants, but if you don't fight for it then are you any better than them?

The difference with is club is it infancy. All those other clubs you mention are subject to a current regime where they are more than aware that the club and the fans were there long before them and will still be there long after they will be gone. With our club this isn’t the case and that’s why Winkelman doesn’t give a shit. It’s his to do with as he pleases and there are no historical fan groups, associations or other pressure groups to work with.

That won’t be changing any time soon either.

My goodness you've changed your tune, the irony...

Every time I dare question the motives of our messiah in the past, you shot me down?!

Apology accepted.