AFC Wimbledon chairman Mick Buckley admits lessons have been learned from last season’s struggles in League Two.
The Dons were relegated to the bottom tier in 2022 and despite under new boss Johnnie Jackson, they won just once in their final 19 games to end up 21st in the table.
But Buckley feels things need to be kept in perspective considering the club’s remarkable rise through the football pyramid since starting out in the Combined Counties League over two decades ago.
He told BBC London: “We’ve had a fantastic 21 years and after the setbacks of 2002 which galvanised us, we didn’t really have any major setbacks.
“We lost a few play-off games along the way but there were no real setbacks.
“I suppose we always wondered how we would deal as a collective with a setback and I think it has been really horrible at times.
“Some of the results have been awful but actually we have managed to start to restructure the club, to bring some people in, to get a sense of purpose about where we want to go.
“I think through all of that we’ve had our moments of drama but we have stayed together. I think that is the key at AFC Wimbledon.”
The chairman also pointed out last season had been a learning curve and believes the struggles on the pitch were perhaps inevitable with so much happening off it at the club in recent years.
Buckley said: “We looked at what happens to clubs when they come into League Two because as you know clubs frequently move up between League One and League Two.
“Clubs rarely come back the first time, it takes a while for them to get organised. A reboot is generally what they need.
“In Wimbledon’s case because we’d come through Covid, built a £32million stadium that took a lot of time and attention, we had worked our way through three or four managers in a very short period of time – I think the reboot was particularly required for us.”
