West Ham’s visit evokes Crazy Gang memories for AFC Wimbledon

Hand-me-downs from the Crazy Gang era come with a few caveats these days but Neal Ardley smiles when explaining the induction process, a notch or two more rigorous than at most football clubs, that modern-era newcomers to AFC Wimbledon are required to undergo.

“Everyone has to get up and sing a song but we also try and take that a little bit further,” the League One club’s manager says. “There’s a little Q&A where they have to stand up on a chair but it’s not a nice Q&A – it’s very intrusive, about many parts of their lives. They need to be ready and there has to be total honesty. The lads get to find out a little bit before, so they know what buttons to press and what questions to ask. Sometimes a nickname can stick from it but it’s all done in fun.”

It still bears little comparison to what went on during Ardley’s playing career and a more relatable throwback will present itself on Tuesday night. West Ham will contest a Carabao Cup tie at the Dons’ tight, creaking Kingsmeadow ground and it does not take too big a stretch to remember a time – 22 occasions to be precise – when this was a top-flight fixture involving the previous incarnation of Wimbledon.

Ardley was around for the vast majority of them and the recollections pour freely. Most of them come from visits to Upton Park, where he watched as Wimbledon overturned a 3-0 deficit to win in 1998 and was on the pitch when, 18 months later, Paolo Di Canio scored the improbable scissor-volley that dominates highlights reels to this day.

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“Ben Thatcher and I were laughing about it a while back and saying: ‘You should have stopped him getting that cross in,’” he says. “But it was like: ‘Then you’d never get to see a replay of that goal.’ I just remember thinking: ‘He’s not done that, has he?’

“Whenever I went to West Ham my first thought was: ‘God, I’ve got to run up and down by the Chicken Run.’ They used to scare the life out of you when you were running down the wing. [But] we felt we could rough anyone up; it was part of the makeup. I don’t think West Ham were ever seen as soft. When you went to Upton Park you knew it would be a tough game, and that’s where their struggles have been over the past few years. London Stadium will give them the chance to put a good team together but they will lose a bit of the fear of Upton Park, which was one of their assets.”

Two of Ardley’s closest friends are West Ham supporters; he has joined them at their new ground before and is well attuned to the needle and neurosis that have engulfed much of the club’s past two years. He feels they will come good under Manuel Pellegrini but also thinks his own side have a chance to further complicate West Ham’s poor start to the campaign. “If you’d asked me what I wanted going into the draw, then I’d have said: ‘A London derby at home under the floodlights and get it on the telly,’” he says.

Ardley enjoyed the rare luxury of a small transfer fee kitty in the summer – using some of it to bring in James Hanson, the towering striker who helped Bradford City reach this competition’s final so memorably in 2012-13 – and, although his outlay of roughly £100,000 is around 1,000 times less than Pellegrini’s pre-season spend, there is optimism that West Ham will be given a game.

AFC Wimbledon have merited a better return than five points from five league matches; they lost narrowly at home to Sunderland on Saturday and Ardley says he cannot fault “the energy, the attacking intent, the chances created” in their early performances. More of the same would surely mean that, as has happened after both their defeats at Kingsmeadow this month, Ardley and his side are applauded off.

The chances are that, whenever this fixture is next played, AFC Wimbledon will finally be based at New Plough Lane. At current rate the move is mooted for early 2020; West Ham provide a lesson, albeit on a different scale, for any club fearing teething problems on upping sticks but Ardley says the preparations have been rigorous.

“I think Erik [Samuelson, the chief executive] and co have done a lot of homework on that – in terms of their design, the problems they’ve faced and the transitional periods,” he says. “Because we’re a fan-owned club our supporters have a really strong voice and they get listened to on ticket prices and things that are or aren’t working on a matchday. So I think we’ll be OK.”

It counts in their favour that, in direct contrast to West Ham, they will be returning to their spiritual home. The pranks and the pratfalls will take place, in their heavily diluted forms, back where it all began. Ardley says that two years ago he sat his players down to have“a really good chat about discrimination and the language they used … just to make sure we felt relaxed in each other’s environment”. Seemingly it had the desired effect. Toppling Premier League opponents before August is out would surely be the definition of good, clean fun.