Wimbledon
City: London
Stadium: See Stadiums
Founded: 1889
Nickname: The Dons; The Wombles;
The Crazy Gang
Wimbledon Football Club were an English football club formed in Wimbledon, south-west London in 1889, and based at Plough Lane, Wimbledon from 1912 to 1991. Founded as Wimbledon Old Centrals,[n 1] the club were a non-League team for most of their history. Nicknamed "the Dons" and latterly "the Wombles", they won eight Isthmian League titles, the FA Amateur Cup in 1963 and three successive Southern League championships between 1975 and 1977, and were then elected to the Football League. The team rose quickly from obscurity during the 1980s and were promoted the then top-flight First Division in 1986, just four seasons after being in the Fourth Division.
Wimbledon's "Crazy Gang"—so-called because of the boisterous, eccentric behaviour of the players—won the FA Cup in 1988, beating that season's League champions Liverpool, and thereby became one of only three clubs to have won both the FA Cup and its amateur counterpart.[n 2] In 1991, following the publication of the Taylor Report recommending all-seater grounds for top-flight clubs, Wimbledon left Plough Lane to groundshare with nearby Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park—an originally temporary arrangement that ended up lasting over a decade. The team remained in the First Division and its successor the FA Premier League until they were relegated in 2000.
In 2001, after rejecting a variety of possible local sites and others further afield, the club announced its intention to move 56 miles (90
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