AFC Wimbledon fans are used to historic moments in the club’s comparatively short history. Six promotions in 14 years took them from the Combined Counties League to League One, which included a penalty shoot-out victory to reach the Football League for the first time.

Most acutely remembered, however, is the decision to allow their original club to be uprooted from south west London, their home since 1889, relocated to Milton Keynes and renamed MK Dons, who had their debut season in 2004.

Ivor Heller, one of the founders of the phoenix club whose fan-ownership model has since been widely emulated, recently published We Shall Not Be Moved: How Wimbledon Fans Beat the Football Association, telling the club’s story. He describes the decision of a three-man FA panel to permit a consortium led by Pete Winkelman to “steal” their club as “football’s crime of the century”. He recalls his anger at reading the commission ruling, which stated that “resurrecting the club from its ashes” was “not in the wider interests of football”.

Heller and his co-founders defied the governing body, reimagined how a football club could be run and became one of English football’s greatest stories: a club owned by the fans climbing the pyramid and now sitting above MK Dons in the League One table.

Yet figures around the club say they are in the most precarious financial position of their existence. The fans are divided about where to turn next, fan owners are running out of money and losses are mounting. Members face a historic vote, deciding whether to accept a significant equity injection – more than £15m – from outside investors, diluting fan control, or face an uncertain financial future.

“I think we’ve gone as far as we can,” Heller tells Telegraph Sport. “If we are looking at owners putting more money into the club, these owners have put in as much as they can – the fans have finally run out of money. Football is a greedy game and it’s got worse.

“The wage inflation is out of control. Manchester City aren’t solely responsible, it was happening before they came along with the really big bucks, but the really big bucks pushed everything up.”

A solution has emerged, but it brings up an unpredictable future that would fundamentally change how the club are run and – some predict – lead to the end of fan ownership. Last season, fan owners voted to allow outside investment of up to 49.99 per cent, ensuring the club remain majority supporter-owned while opening the door to investors capable of increasing their spending power.

The club have been in talks with about 20 interested parties – including a consortium led by club legend Robbie Earle – and on Wednesday evening fan owners were presented in a meeting with the preferred bidder: a consortium including Ryan Bertrand, the former Chelsea defender and Champions League winner. Members have until November 17 to vote online whether to accept the proposal.

Many AFC Wimbledon fans were not born when the club were removed from the area and are desperate for fresh outside investment to join the rest of the Football League gambling precariously with clubs’ futures in pursuit of promotion. Yet older generations, who lived through the past trauma, want to tread carefully.

“It’s not a given that it will go through,” says one fan owner, who asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships. “As the older fans who went through the trauma die off, there will be a growing inclination in younger fans to want a better team and promotion, and this ultimate ambition to get back in the Premier League.

“The attraction of Wimbledon is its history. The anxiety of older fans, having achieved the impossible of forming a new club and now being in the same league as MK Dons, they’re not prepared to risk the same thing happening again.”

The risks of spending to compete are high and, in many ways, the club are being forced into this decision, potentially marking League One as the ceiling for fan ownership. The Independent Football Regulator’s “State of the Game” report revealed that wages in League One are now 102 per cent of revenues. Across the EFL, two-thirds of clubs could not survive 90 days without an injection of funding from their owners, while 29 per cent could not survive a month.

Wimbledon’s owners will not be able to see last season’s accounts, due out in December, and the financial health of the club before the vote. But, according to sources, the club expect to post a loss in the region of £3m when their 2025-26 accounts are published. While still well below the average League One loss of £7.5m, it is stretching the limits of what a fan-owned club can sustain.

How long can Wimbledon keep competing under those financial constraints? At those losses, the club had the 23rd-lowest playing budget in a season in which they narrowly avoided relegation.

Directors were wary of the financial strain caused by making eight signings in the summer of 2025, following promotion from League Two, but deemed it necessary to give the team a fighting chance of survival. The club even appealed to supporters to contribute. But three players were sold in the last transfer window to balance the books.

Another pressing matter is a bond repayment cliff edge hurtling ever closer in 2027. Part of the £34m cost of building their stadium was raised through a Plough Lane bond scheme, which raised about £9.5m. But in early 2027, about £3.3m is owed back to bondholders – a figure that would effectively double their annual losses.

Even if the vote fails, the club will probably find another way forward, once again leaning on the generosity of fans, who could convert their bonds into equity or extend them. But it adds urgency to proceedings.

It is telling that Heller, who has plunged his entire life into the club, is excited about the prospect of a new era.

“The most important thing everyone wanted was that we remain majority-owned, and we are. Whether that will change in the future, my honest gut feeling is it will. I’m not scared of that happening.

“The most important thing for me is our crown jewels are protected. As long as the ground and the club itself is protected, we’ll always have somewhere to play. We want to make sure we’re secure and at no stage is there any chance we could move out of it.”

A quarter of a century on, the prospect of the club being taken away – something barely contemplated by supporters of almost any other club – is still at the forefront of thinking.

“No other club has literally been stolen and moved up the motorway. No other club has got another club calling them, them.”

And, for now at least, the decision remains in supporters’ hands.

“We are telling our fans and our fans have a choice,” Heller adds. “It could get voted down – I don’t think it will but it could. As long as there’s democracy in play, that’s fine. Whether democracy will be in play for ever I doubt it somehow, but we’d have given the club a solid base.

“I feel very confident that in years to come there’s going to be a club called Wimbledon playing in Plough Lane, and that’s something I’m very thankful for.”