[St Charles Owl]

It's a very interesting question. I associate a plastic club with the likes of MK Dons and the Red Bull franchise, clubs which have been created out of thin air or been taken over. All clubs need money and financial injections to help them progress and get through the leagues but it has to be done correctly and that means not putting the club at long-term risk of going out of business. Certain fans of traditional clubs talk about history and that other clubs don't have history well that history comes about from creating it.

Matt by your measure every club is a plastic club, all clubs were initially created out of thin air.  I have never understood the plastic tag being thrown at MK Dons, they were a club with no ground, a council that wouldn't support them and no prospects of getting a ground in London.  They did what I think was the right thing, they moved to a city that wanted them, that could provide the financial stability they were unable to gain at Plough Lane or in Merton and that would allow them to create an identity that they could be proud of.  Your last line in the above aptly describes MK Dons, they stopped waiting for help from places they were not getting any from and they are doing their best to create their own history.

As an Owl, I still dream of seeing us play in the PL again.  I am not that bothered about the Champions League but the occasional good cup run, Wembley appearance and maybe a year in the Europa Cup would be nice.  I would also be happy to accept that bar maybe 8-9 teams just about every other one should expect to be relegated at some point but its having the resources to be able to bounce back from that when it happens.  

We have a so called wealthy chairman, he has sunk a ton of money into the club and we have been penalized for that while really getting nowhere, so getting a billionaire at any level below the PL is fairly pointless as they cannot spend their money anyway now.  Get rid of FFP, allow owners to inject money but do not allow them to loan the money or put the club in debt, its a gift and therefore up to them what they put in. I would be fine with an owner who spends his money and gets us promoted and would feel no embarrassment or shame from that if it means the club is safe, secure and successful.

Maybe I should clarify what I mean. I'm on about clubs which have been taken over by a franchise and they change the identity, name, colours, badge and do away the history of the club. Teams like Salzburg and Leipzig who have been taken over by Red Bull are teams which I associate as plastic.

The MK Dons thing sits in people's craw because they took Wimbledon moved it to Milton Keynes but also they took a league place where most teams which are created and set up have to start right at the bottom of the football pyramid and work there way up. It was the way MK Dons came about which annoys people, if they had done it the right way and set up a club and entered a regional non-league division then I think fans of other clubs would have respected it more. I know in America it's very popular for owners to buy sports franchises and move them to different cities and change the name, identity and rebrand them. How would you feel if someone bought Sheffield Wednesday and then moved that club to Surrey and called it Surrey Wednesday and did away with the original history of Sheffield Wednesday?

To be fair the taking over of the league position is a gripe that should be aimed at the EFL rather than the club as I am sure they were the ones who sanctioned it. I am sure they claimed they were the same club but obviously a change of name was going to be needed. I get the comparison of what we see in the US, I certainly wouldn't call it popular in terms of fans but you see it every couple of years over here. For me the problem over here is that the most important part of a franchises name is the Bulls or Dodgers rather than Chicago or Los Angeles, that makes the teams more portable as they keep that part of the name. In football, the city name is more important than the nickname.