Marked for Will Wright
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad7 Dec 2026
The words a physio says slowly. 25 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Match7 Dec 2026
Every point is an argument now for AFC Wimbledon
Position 24 and 11 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Match1 Dec 2026
0‑3 against Plymouth Argyle, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
The dugout7 Dec 2026
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad7 Dec 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Antwoine Hackford and AFC Wimbledon agree another 4 years.
The dugout7 Dec 2026
The manager makes an example of Harry Cornick
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Match5 Dec 2026
0‑1 to Northampton Town, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Boardroom7 Dec 2026
Nobody left the AFC Wimbledon dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Andy Yiadom was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad30 Nov 2026
The words a physio says slowly. 33 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad30 Nov 2026
6 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Match28 Nov 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Will Wright. 2‑1 against Reading, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
The terraces30 Nov 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Kamarni Ryan has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
Will Wright was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.05. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Billy Blacker was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Too much change too quickly at AFC Wimbledon
8 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑1, Nicholas Marshall could afford to be generous.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
Kamarni Ryan beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 14. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad23 Nov 2026
41 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. AFC Wimbledon lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Match21 Nov 2026
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Harry Cornick will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at AFC Wimbledon escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.37 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad23 Nov 2026
6 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
A defender's goal wins it for AFC Wimbledon — 7.35
1 for Will Wright, marked 7.35, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Match21 Nov 2026
Beaten 3‑5, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad23 Nov 2026
17 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Sam Hutchinson was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 3‑5, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Sep 2026
The words a physio says slowly. 109 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Match16 Sep 2026
Out, 0‑1 to Lincoln City, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Nobody could get near Shea Lacey
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Hernán Luna and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad21 Sep 2026
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Squad21 Sep 2026
No place for Hernán Luna in the new shape
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation AFC Wimbledon are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Nobody on the pitch touched Andy Yiadom
7.49, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. AFC Wimbledon had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Market21 Sep 2026
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Nicholas Marshall chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Junior Hoilett and Swindon Town agree another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Ryan Tafazolli and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Portsmouth have kept their man, and Swindon Town go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Junior Hoilett retires from international football
“65 caps. I have loved every one, and it is somebody else’s turn.” At 36 he has stepped away from his country and is going nowhere at Swindon Town.
Squad3 Aug 2026
7 new faces, and Swindon Town are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
A loan move for Ibane Bowat is in the works
Swindon Town have made the call to Portsmouth. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Market3 Aug 2026
The clock runs on Connor Ripley's contract
24 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
Market3 Aug 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Swindon Town, another week without a signature from Redman Evans.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
Gavin Kilkenny knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Gavin Kilkenny trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.