One thousand games as MK Dons but are they any closer to realising their grand plan?

It has been 6,686 days, two stadiums, 14 managers, one Dean Lewington and 1,000 games for MK Dons.

On August 7, 2004, the club played their first game - a 1-1 draw with Barnsley at the National Hockey Stadium. It was also the first round of games in the newly renamed League One. Eighteen years later, the club is still there.

For all the hope, aim and ambition the club has talked up over the years, the great moments and sporadic periods of elation, one uncomfortable truth remains: Dons have played more League One games than any other club – 659 to be precise.

That’s 140 games more than Peterborough, who sit fourth in that list, while neither Oldham Athletic nor Walsall, who are second and third, remain in the division.

Dons have only spent four seasons out of the division, and three of those were in League Two.

Of course the club has come on leaps and bounds since that first game in 2004. They have their own stadium, for one, actually built for football... most of the time. They are still maligned by some fans and even clubs to this day, but they are more established, polished and have carved out their identity.

That identity though was not supposed to be perennially in the third tier.

There have been moments to live long in the memory though – that Tranmere goal, lifting the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy at Wembley, the Heel of God, beating QPR in the FA Cup, the 4-0 win over Manchester United, securing promotion to the Championship and developing a future England international in the form of Dele Alli.

The club too has become a staple in the community, and now accepted and regular fixture in the way the city operates, attracting sports events, major football tournaments, music concerts and even a Swedish flat-pack furniture shop to the area.

But with the club unlikely to be mounting a promotion push again this year, instead fighting for their lives to prevent a third relegation to the fourth tier, it looks as though the story of MK Dons will remain in the third tier for a little while yet.

The dream, the idea of bringing the club to Milton Keynes was to bring top-flight football to the city. But it took MK 55 years to get city status, and the wait for the football club to to realise the dream cannot take that long.