"I know what I did was controversial": Winkelman on MK Dons move and sale

Pete Winkelman opened up about MK Dons’ controversial beginnings as he handed the ownership torch to Fahad Al Ghanim.

After two decades owning the team, becoming the poster boy for hatred after moving the club from London to the new city, Winkelman walks away from Stadium MK with a heavy heart.

Leaving with the club in League Two was not the way the outgoing chairman wanted to do it, but Winkelman felt he had taken the club as far as he could financially, with it still needing more to get the team in a place Mike Williamson felt was good enough to fight for the title this term.

This was not meant to be his story though, he admitted. Only intending the build a stadium to house football in MK, Winkelman ended up owning Wimbledon, and the rest is history.

“I wasn't supposed to bring football to Milton Keynes in the first place,” he said. “I was clever enough to have billionaire owners in the first place, but they bottled out. And it was left with me.

“Then we got into it, and we tried to find someone who cared more than me, but no-one did. Whilst I felt I could compete, it was easy.”

But in bringing second-tier football to the city, he leaves with the club in League Two – two leagues lower than when it arrived. That burden was something was something he said weighed heavy on his shoulders over the last few years, and signalled the beginning of the end for him.

He continued: “Relegation killed me, it was such a shock and it's not good enough. 

“I've got regrets and things I could have done differently, but they're all to do with the football team. I know what I did was controversial and that history hasn't helped me.

“Maybe it's karmic that we didn't go and have that success - I'm an old hippie, I believe in that sort of thing!”

He added: “I know what the club needs is a sprinkling of magic, and money when it needs it. Not because we've got a concert coming up, or we've had to close the Cowshed because we've got an event in the Arena, or whatever horrors we've had to do. It was all to try and get money to the football club.

“I didn't build this to have a lower league football club, but a top flight one. And that's what I think the consortium will have the chance of doing.

“Money isn't everything in football, but we have to have the ability to do something when it's needed, not when we can. I hope that bit of principle will be the difference.”