Day: November 18, 2010

For all that supporters across the board may have breathed a sigh of relief, the suspicion remains that the media were less than thrilled by Stevenage’s penalty shoot-out win on Tuesday night. With the winning penalty kick went the story of the Second Round – the grudge match that had been talked of as if it was already a certainty. As it stands, the winners of tonight’s match (oddly scheduled to a Thursday night) will entertain Stevenage the weekend after next. Few, at least from Wimbledon, will be particularly disappointed by this. They must have felt a weight lifting from their collective shoulder and this evening’s trip from south-west London to Kent must have felt a good deal more comfortable than it might otherwise have done. Wimbledon and Ebbsfleet United offer two different perspectives on the notion of supporter ownership. Wimbledon’s success as a club owned by their supporters has been well documented. They sit top of the Blue Square Premier and, by this time next year, they could be a Football League club. Ebbsfleet United have had a more difficult time of it. The My Football Club experiment is still there, but whether it would be generous to describe it as having been a success. True enough, they won the FA Trophy during the first season of ownership. Their financial problems as the membership drained away, however, have...