Sir Alex Ferguson never had a problem with Wimbledon. Others did. In the days of Dave Bassett and his like-minded successors, there were plenty who moaned about their long ball, anti-football.
Ferguson took a different view. He recognised that Wimbledon had good players, and admired their resilience and underdog defiance. And he knew the bottom line. The way to expose the shortcomings of a long ball game was to beat it.
In the main, he did. One of his first matches as Manchester United manager was a 1-0 defeat at Plough Lane — Vinnie Jones scored — and Wimbledon beat his team in each of his first three seasons.