THE definition of purgatory this football season: an agoraphobic Wimbledon supporter.
At least, let us hope so. Let us hope that when the new campaign begins at home to Gillingham on Saturday, Selhurst Park is at its most empty, unforgiving and desolate, that the site stands as if struck by a neutron bomb and Charles Koppel, the Wimbledon chairman, roams like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man through rows and rows of lifeless shops and bars, past abandoned seats and uninhabited executive boxes.
And then, when play begins, let us hope his team is humiliated, ripped apart, the first of many such defeats in a season that condemns this faux-Wimbledon, these impostors, to begin life in Milton Keynes within the next 12 months down among the dead men, one of the forgotten clubs that Koppel and his fellow first division chairmen intend cutting loose once they have completed their salivating carve-up of the Nationwide League’s meagre bounty.
Wimbledon Football Club, which will, after this season, exist only in name and for legal convenience, deserves nothing more than to be haunted by loneliness and failure in its time of dying. The club that Koppel is to destroy once stood as inspiration for every underdog from the brink of the Premier League to pitch 147 on Hackney Marshes. Now it warrants only a pauper’s grave.
Of course, the club has been in the poor house for a long time. Koppel would argue that is why he is relocating to Buckinghamshire in the first place.
In a fit of pique he might wonder why those who purport to have such feeling for the club did not make their presence felt at the turnstiles before it came to this. Yet it can hardly have been a surprise to find that Wimbledon was under-supported and hopelessly disadvantaged by not having its own ground. Koppel would have to be a spectacularly bad businessman not to have foreseen the resulting financial pressures. Or a highly devious one who had eyes on a move away from the spiritual South London home long before assuming control.
At root, Koppel is no different to the television bosses who have plunged the Football League into its greatest crisis. They signed a contract for one amount then expected to pay another. He bought Wimbledon Football Club and was shocked it was skint. Whatever next? Millwall chairman mystified by crowd trouble? New Chelsea coach surprised to have foreigners on the staff. Tel quits Leeds. “Turns out it’s in Yorkshire,” he says.
Koppel is a dreadful opportunist and in that way ideally suited to the first division, whose chairmen intend turning a drama into a crisis and ultimately financial Armageddon for some by restructuring the Nationwide League to give the richest more money at the expense of the truly needy below.
Led by folk who have been involved in English football for roughly as long as the latest Serie A loan signing, although with slightly less commitment to local traditions, they will line their own pockets under the cloak of rescue packages and social concern.
Clearly now, Koppel cannot be stopped from moving once Wimbledon has played its final game in the London area. Today the club will hold a press conference to reveal a new sponsor and the Milton Keynes location for the announcement suggests not even lip service continues to be paid to the Wimbledon name and its history. It will survive beyond the move only as some laughable compromise that helped the deal through while those in Soho Square were too busy turning Japanese around Sven “George Graham” Eriksson. If there is one decision that should forever taint Adam Crozier’s time at the FA it is that, under him, English football took its first step towards the franchise; and, for fans, the abyss.
Supporters of Gillingham have a dilemma on Saturday. Wimbledon’s followers intend throwing a good-natured picket line around Selhurst Park and are asking the visitors to join them. But that means missing the first game of the new season and, understandably, is a matter of debate. Yet suppose Koppel — or any other avaricious opportunist — turned his attention to your club. Suppose in a worst-case scenario Angelle wanted it as a plaything.
Never heard of Angelle? Tune to channel 455 of Sky Digital and prepare to be amazed. Vibe TV, a small-time satellite channel that had hoped to exploit the nightclubbing youth market, is now dedicated to launching the pop career of the latest insipid blonde wannabe. Angelle has 12 hours of looped programming devoted to her exploits daily. There’s an Angelle concert, an Angelle interview, Angelle: My Week (parts one to five), The Making of Angelle and, of course, Angelle: Behind The Music (yeah, right). See Angelle sing. Hear Angelle dance. Madonna, she ain’t. So why is she on? Because Angelle’s boyfriend is Steve Bennett, a dot-com millionaire who has spent £2 million infesting the airwaves with her talent. And he is allowed to do it because Vibe TV is a franchise and can, within reason, broadcast anything its boss decrees.
So what if Angelle next decides she wants her own football club, playing at the bottom of her garden. Hell, what if she announces she wants to be manager? Oh, I know it is far-fetched. But ask Wimbledon regulars if they ever believed their club would one day be playing a derby match with Northampton Town, while keeping the name of a suburb of southwest London.
Ask those who attended the FA Cup Final if they thought back then that 14 years later they could be playing in the Combined Counties League, the new home of recently formed AFC Wimbledon, the phoenix club that will carry the banner for many supporters this season and attracted a crowd of 4,657 to its first friendly with Sutton United last month. Allowing one football club to lose its identity strikes at the heart of them all.
Gillingham’s supporters have every reason to be afraid — but they have a great opportunity to make their presence felt, too. Without Premiership football this weekend, the focus will be on the Nationwide. There are 45 other matches to show their love for Gillingham. But this is their only chance to show their love for the game, the club and what it means to people. By leaving Selhurst Park empty.
And Wimbledon? Well, with apologies to the players and staff against whom I bear no grudge, I truly, madly and deeply hope they are relegated. With a bullet. And as Mr Koppel seems confused as to the identity of his club, may I offer a few suggestions.
I hope Wimbledon play like Bon Accord, beaten 36-0 by Arbroath in the Scottish Cup first round, September 1885. May they be as prolific as Hartlepool United, who went 13 games, two months or 1,227 minutes without scoring in season 1992-93. May they defend like Ipswich Town, relegated conceding 121 goals in 1964, while the goalkeeper emulates the gentleman from Hyde FC, who let in 26 against Preston North End in October 1887. Finally, may the club be as well supported as Rochdale, watched by 450 people against Cambridge United in 1974.
As for Koppel, may he take to Milton Keynes the club he deserves to represent. One with nothing to boast but its name — and may he watch even that shrink in significance with every blasted mile he travels up the M1.
