Lee Worgan has defended Wimbledon’s move to Milton Keynes as he prepares to face his old club in the FA Cup.

The Maidstone goalkeeper started his career as a schoolboy with the original Dons, growing up around the likes of Vinnie Jones and witnessed all sorts as a young member of the Crazy Gang during their Premier League days.

He was one of the players who made the move to Milton Keynes following the controversial relocation in 2003.

Worgan, who turns 34 today, loved the original club and understands why MK Dons to this day are branded ‘Franchise FC’ but he was in a difficult position after the shock of learning the Wimbledon he knew were on their knees.

He said: “I’d just signed a three-year pro contract at the time.

“We all got taken into a meeting and they basically said, ‘pay day’s tomorrow, you’re not getting paid’.

“The club were basically finished. They had £50,000 in the bank, the Norwegian owners had bled it dry.

“Without wanting to preach too much, I was part of the club when they had to make that transition and I know they get a lot of stick over the whole Franchise FC thing but, at the time, you’re talking about 50-100 people’s jobs that were on the line.

“If that club didn’t move up to Milton Keynes, then we wouldn’t have had a job, there wouldn’t have been Nigel Reo-Coker, Mikele Leigertwood, Dean Lewington, Jobi McAnuff. All of these players that went on to have good Premier League and Football League careers would have gone in different directions and maybe not achieved the things they did.

“That move to Milton Keynes gave us all a platform to then be playing in the Championship.

“I only played a handful of games myself when we eventually moved up to MK and we started at the hockey stadium as a quick fix.

“It’s just one of those situations where people need to look into what actually happened rather than just seeing it as a club that was franchised.”

Worgan feels it’s unfair for people to criticise MK Dons over what happened, while joining the new AFC Wimbledon as they started out in the lower reaches of non-league wasn’t an option for a young professional.

He said: “If anyone’s to blame it would be the people that bought Wimbledon and effectively ran it into the ground.

“I don’t know if anyone at MK should have to take any grief for it because their town needed a football club.

“It’s not the right way to go about it but if they didn’t, we as players wouldn’t have had a club. As young players, we didn’t know where to turn.

“We were getting a lot of fan mail saying you’ve got to join AFC Wimbledon, who were playing in a pub league, so it was all a bit strange for a lot of us as we had to make the transition.”

Worgan recalls being a target for AFC Wimbledon fans after joining Wycombe on loan.

He said: “We got sheltered a little bit being young players but at one point I went on loan to Wycombe when Tony Adams was manager and there was a core of AFC Wimbledon fans that came to the games just to give me grief.

“But again I don’t really know what people expect you to do in that position.

“It’s difficult for a young player, you’re in the game and it’s all you know. I don’t know what direction people expected us to take. It was sad how the whole thing happened because I look back on my youth career and that club’s effectively gone.

“But I enjoyed MK Dons because I got to go to Derby and Nottingham Forest and all the experience I got there moulded me into the goalkeeper I am today.”

Read the full interview - including Worgan on the Crazy Gang antics - in this week's Kent Messenger