Murdoch's mission is to repay the Dons gamble

Few football managers are appointed without having played the game at League level and fewer still are former goalkeepers. So when a man who qualifies on both counts takes over a club losing £1m every six weeks, whose supporters are so disenchanted that they have formed their own alternative team, he is entitled to say, as Stuart Murdoch did last week: "It's a challenge."

That assessment from the new manager of Wimbledon may, in fact, qualify as one of the understatements of the summer. It has been a close-season in which divisions created by the owners' insistence on relocating from south London to Milton Keynes became a schism that could never be healed once an independent commission appointed by the Football Association ruled two months ago, after a split vote, that the move up the M1 should be allowed because of "exceptional circumstances". The club chairman Charles Koppel hopes to make that switch by the new year, utilising the National Bowl concert arena until a new 28,000-capacity stadium is ready in two years' time.

Having sacked their manager, Terry Burton, who had voiced the opinion that the new stadium should be "local", rather than 70 miles away, the Dons needed a replacement. "Originally we were looking for a manager with a proven track record, and we had a lot of interest from all levels of the game," said Koppel. "But the club is going through a period of change and we felt it was important for the players and staff to have continuity."

Enter Murdoch, a fiftysomething managerial virgin from Lancashire who once stood between the posts for Altrincham and Lancaster City, was a primary school headmaster in Ipswich, then worked for Watford for nine years before joining Wimbledon in 1996 as goalkeeping coach.

It is an accepted part of football tradition that goalkeepers are crazy – though not normally crazy enough to become managers. Murdoch doubted that the opportunity would ever arise, given his teaching background, though he has always remembered a conversation with Bertie Mee, the former Arsenal manager, with whom he shared an office at Watford.

"We used to have half an hour's football philosophy every morning before everybody else turned up, and one of the first things he asked me was how far I thought I was going to go in the game. Did I want to be a manager? I said I didn't honestly think I'd be given the opportunity, because people with my background don't do that – it's ex-professionals who've been internationals and the like. And he said: 'Well, look at me, I came from being a physio to managing a Double-winning side. So keep your horizons as high as possible'. And it's strange how things have worked out."

At Vicarage Road he was youth development officer and chief scout, then coached the youth team and reserves before being sacked along with Glenn Roeder six years ago. Goalkeeper-coaching on a part-time basis at Wimbledon became full-time under Joe Kinnear, Egil Olsen and Burton and he was placed in what was assumed to be temporary charge following the latter's departure at the end of the season. "I worked a bit with the first team, but when Terry was sacked I thought I'd probably be going as well. Much to my surprise, after quite a long period of uncertainty during the summer break, the chairman offered me the position. I'd gone to a meeting with him thinking he was going to tell me who the new manager was going to be. Players' contracts were up and we needed to get plans sorted out. About an hour into the meeting, I said that we hadn't discussed the first thing on my list, which was the manager and he said perhaps I'd like to be the manager. So we moved onto the next item on the agenda."

That agenda suddenly took on greater urgency for Murdoch. There were no fewer than 16 players whose time was up and the captain, Kenny Cunningham, was on his way back to the Premiership with Birmingham City. The so-called parachute payments following relegation two years ago had stopped, life-long supporters were pledging their allegiance to the new AFC Wimbledon and Koppel's latest estimate was that losses had reached £25,000 a day. Bidding for Rio Ferdinand was not an option.

But if a football man cannot be optimistic five days before the opening of a new season, when can he be? Having got used to the idea of being the man in charge, Murdoch insists that the picture is not as bleak as has been painted. Few of the squad who finished ninth in the First Division last season have actually left, others whose contracts have expired could yet stay, and internationals Mark Williams and Hakan Mild are at last fit again.

As Murdoch walks along the Selhurst Park touchline as manager for the first time before Saturday's home game with Gillingham, there will be a human chain of supporters from various clubs standing outside in protest. He claims to have had numerous letters from other fans saying that, while not agreeing with the move to Buckinghamshire, they will continue to support the team. "My worry concerns what goes on inside the white lines. We'll attempt to get on with our own jobs and hopefully we'll be allowed to do so. All those things on the periphery will have an effect at some stage – players want to play in front of a receptive audience and the bigger the crowd the better it is for motivation."

Those who continue watching matches – the first clash with an AFC Wimbledon home game comes on 24 August – have been promised that "we'll try to play attractive football" and that Route One stuff is as much a thing of the past as the idea of the Crazy Gang causing mayhem on and off the pitch. As to the chances of producing a winning team, whatever the venue, Murdoch says: "We've got experience in the right areas and some exciting youngsters. I'd hope we can at least equal what we did last season. We'll be looking to push on from there if things go well and I'm the sort of manager I hope to be – a lucky one."