THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

I live too far away to know all the in's & out's of why the club support on matchday is where it is.

Having a big, attractive stadium is rarely a 'problem'. And if the club had achieved promotion in 2009 as was mentioned, and to be fair even only a couple of years ago when we were so close- this conversation might be different.

But League 2 isn't going to bring the supporters who watch from afar BACK into the stadium. League 1, doing well, playing attractive & making progress...might improve things.

Success on the field is always a key element. People love watching their team win.

My biggest concern is the term 'their team'. Where I think the club has let themselves down is building that core support from the community. Someone got laughed at for the 78 references to 'kids' earlier- but funnily enough- that's where you build your core support of the future. You want those 5-10 year olds buying in. Get lifelong support. Swinging 30 year olds over is hard. They already have 'their team'. Building a supporter base- a solid base- is often generational.

When they were doing tours of the almost completed stadium, our group were being shown round by John Cove. I asked him what sort of attendance would be needed to cover the cost of running the stadium. He said they were working on a figure of 14000. Oh if only.

Accurate comments like this wind me up, because I still haven't got over Pete not doing absolutely everything necessary to keep us in the Championship in 2016. It took us so long and final day luck to get there. That would have been a regular 11-12k with 17 or 18k against the popular teams.

This. If we had spunked a million up the wall on Will Grigg we'd be challenging for a Europa League spot by now

The club is a bit stuck in terms of fanbase.

Just about everyone in the MK area who likes football will have been to the Dons at some point by now (even if it was only for the Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool games).

Anyone who likes it and is interested is going, and anyone who doesn't isn't bothering. Other than kids coming through, there aren't any new markets to tap into.

And as Camden said the other day, those who have been before and are disaffected are going to take A LOT of convincing to come back. Look at when Coventry ended up playing in Northampton for a year: thousands of people suddenly realised how much valuable time and money they were saving every weekend by not going to football. That was a decade ago and it's only really in the last year or two that they've got back to a 'normal' level of attendance.

Barring anything miraculous, Dons home attendances are going to be 4500-6500 for the next few years at least IMO.

This. If we had spunked a million up the wall on Will Grigg we'd be challenging for a Europa League spot by now

You scoff but it was our downfall. We had Simon fucking church leading the line. Two real Madrid kids who couldn't find Milton Keynes on the map. There are others like Forster-caskey and Emmanuel-Thomas who did little to nothing. We were so ill equipped if it wasn't for Bolton implosion that season we should have been rock bottom. We spent so much trying to get there that once we did we fucking blew it. Now not saying Grigg would have done much but we did not invest and still to this day it is the biggest mistake we ever made. One I feel we have never recovered from

You scoff but it was our downfall. We had Simon fucking church leading the line. Two real Madrid kids who couldn't find Milton Keynes on the map. There are others like Forster-caskey and Emmanuel-Thomas who did little to nothing. We were so ill equipped if it wasn't for Bolton implosion that season we should have been rock bottom. We spent so much trying to get there that once we did we fucking blew it. Now not saying Grigg would have done much but we did not invest and still to this day it is the biggest mistake we ever made. One I feel we have never recovered from