A long time ago, MK Dons were seen by pundits as set for a 2024/25 season to remember.

It’s safe to say it was a memorable campaign at Stadium MK, but not in the way that fans were hoping for. A finish of 19th position in League Two is the Dons’ lowest finish in the fourth tier, with it coming at the end of a pretty turbulent campaign.

This was a season that featured five different permanent and caretaker managers and some true lowlights but at least avoided what would’ve been a true nadir of falling into the National League.

Many connected with MK Dons will want to move on to next season quickly, but plenty will also wonder exactly how a team seen as promotion candidates wound up hitting reverse gear.

At the start of the campaign, there were plus points in the Dons’ favour. Although the play-off implosion ended the previous season on a bum note, MK Dons still had shown great form to recover from a slow start to be the closest challenger to strong Stockport, Wrexham and Mansfield side that took the automatic promotion places.

Mike Williamson still had some credit in the bank for the turnaround over the 2023/24 season, and he was backed in the market. While losing top scorer Max Dean was a concern, a new look squad swelled by several players who’d won promotion with other League 2 clubs or challenged for promotion meant many felt they were in a prime position to challenge.

In many respects, it was set to be a new start at MK Dons with the surprise announcement the day before the opening game that Pete Winkelman had sold up, selling the club to a Kuwaiti consortium. They have begun to have an effect over the season, with a new structure, new communication philosophy and tweaks to ticket pricing.

As for the on-pitch product, however, the Dons made a pretty poor start, with Williamson’s side losing 4 of their first 6. The last of those – a 3-0 loss to AFC Wimbledon – seemed to be the moment where fan irritation at Williamson that had began simmering with multiple defensive collapses at the end of the previous season truly began to boil over with calls for a change.

A change would come, but not in the way many expected, with the pivotal moment that ended Williamson’s tenure at MK Dons being one of his final wins.

A 3-0 win for the Dons at home to Carlisle United impressed the Cumbrians’ owner Tom Piatak, and a few weeks later, Piatak was unveiling Williamson as the new boss at Brunton Park.

Williamson’s move created a three-hander of manager transfers, with MK Dons moving quickly to sign Scott Lindsey from Crawley and the Sussex club turning to Rob Elliot, who had succeeded his former Newcastle teammate Williamson at Gateshead when Williamson moved to Milton Keynes in 2023.

Ultimately, however, no part of this manager triangle worked. Williamson was a disaster at Carlisle, sacked after only winning 5 from 25 games and blamed by many Carlisle fans for their second relegation in a row. Meanwhile, Elliot struggled to adapt from managing Gateshead in the National League to Crawley in League One and would leave after winning 6 of 33 games.

The fact Lindsey ended up returning to Crawley as Elliot’s successor in an ultimately doomed attempt to keep them up, meanwhile, tells you all you need to know about how well it went for Lindsey in MK.

Lindsey had been on MK Dons’ radar for his emphatic play-off win against them in 2024, backed up by winning the play-off final and making a reasonable start in the third tier despite Crawley losing more or less their entire squad over the summer.

Initially, things looked promising. Five goals in his first win hinted that there was a decent team in development, and a run of six straight wins between late October and early December backed this up as the Dons, much as they had the previous season, jumped up the league table.

There were some warning signs – not least the fact only one of these games saw MK Dons keep a clean sheet, including conceding in the opening minute at home to Swindon and being 2-0 down at home to Cheltenham after 13 minutes.

But it seemed as though Lindsey had got the Dons into a groove, with the team sat in the top 3 after a polished 3-0 win over Chesterfield in early December.

Things then very quickly went into reverse. Getting sucker punched by Gillingham was one way to end the unbeaten run, but following that up by conceding 6 at Newport really was the start of a collapse in form.

A truly abysmal run of 2 wins in 17 games truly blew up any pretensions the Dons had of making the play-offs, with multiple matches seeing MK Dons dominate possession then run out of ideas when confronted with a low block.

Lindsey was backed in January, with MK Dons signing 7 new players, including more former Crawley players in Jay Williams and Danilo Orsi, joining summer arrivals Liam Kelly and Laurence Maguire, along with a highly regarded League One level defender in Nathan Thompson, a replacement for Thompson after he got a season-ending injury in his second game, and Dan Crowley, who’d been man of the match when MK Dons lost to Notts County on Boxing Day.

But nothing clicked. A winless February truly saw the Dons’ promotion hopes slide out of view and things ultimately became untenable, with Lindsey shown the door in March after a 1-0 loss at home to Colchester in a game where Jack Payne’s first return to MK saw him deliver the final insult.

MK Dons turned to Ben Gladwin, a former Dons midfielder who had previously succeeded Lindsey as an interim at Crawley. But after two promising results early on in beating Morecambe and Cheltenham, things slumped again, with a truly miserable week that saw the Dons concede 10 goals in losing to Fleetwood, Notts County and Barrow perhaps being a rock bottom moment for season and club.

It all means that for MK Dons, the upcoming summer means this will have to be a time when they have to go away and dream it all up again. Near the end of the season, they found the man they want to lead the rebuild.

In something of a coup, the Dons were able to land Paul Warne, last seen taking Derby County into the Championship. Warne’s four games feel almost disconnected from the rest of the season, with a more defensively solid Dons keeping 4 clean sheets in a row, having only kept 5 clean sheets in the entire remainder of the season before that.

One of those was the grand farewell to Dean Lewington, who at age 40 has opted to hang up his boots and means that next season will be the strange new world that is a Dons without Dean, who’d played in every campaign since the formation of the club in 2004. Such was the affection shown his way in his final home game that many appreciate the gravity of such a scene change.

Going forward, Warne’s task will now be to mould what he has into something better. There are certainly players with potential to launch a promotion push, and indeed players who can call upon the experience they previously showed in promotions with others, so transfer work will presumably be underway to find those who can elevate the squad to the next level.

It looks as though Warne’s philosophy will move on from the pass-heavy MK Way philosophy, which many MK Dons fans seem perfectly content with given how that approach seemed to break down this season.

Several games seemed to fit a continual loop of MK Dons being unable to break down a low block and struggle to create chances, nevermind goals, so it makes sense that having run out of road, it’s time for something else.

If the 2024/25 season is anything, it’s that MK Dons at least avoided a total nadir in falling into the National League, with a Morecambe team beset by off-pitch problems and the aforementioned Carlisle sliding out instead.

If nothing else, MK Dons can be content the season cleared that low bar, but a ton of work is required to sculpt a squad that can be competitive at the other end of the table and prove lessons have been learned from what we’ve just seen them do.