AFC Wimbledon struck gold with historic Brentford transfer | OneFootball

Marcus Forss was amazing loanee for the Dons, but his brilliant time at the club was cut short way too soon

While you would not think it now, following a few average years in the Championship, Marcus Forss was a force to be reckoned with when he signed for AFC Wimbledon.

The then-Brentford youngster joined the Bees' London neighbours on a loan deal in the 2019/20 season and, during his time with the Dons, he lit up League One.

But perhaps an over-reliance on such young legs was the reason why his shining spell came to a shattering and sudden halt. That, had Covid not intervened, could have completely derailed the Dons' season in the third tier.

Marcus Forss' dominant time with the Dons

The signing of Forss was perhaps a little left-field for the Dons at the time, as under previous boss, at the time, Neal Ardley, they had plumped for signing more experienced forwards who had travelled round the EFL, or perhaps the Scottish football leagues.

So when it was announced that then-manager Wally Downes had utilised his Brentford contacts, having worked at the club previously in his coaching career, to bring in the Finnish forward on transfer deadline day back in 2019, there was plenty of intrigue around the newest kid on the block.

Of course, Dons fans were not unfamiliar with bringing in talent from clubs in the leagues above them, but to pin the hopes of a club's season on the shoulders of a then 20-year-old clearly meant that this loanee was going to be a class above.

And he proved just that, with seven goals in his first seven appearances for the Dons, perhaps buoyed by the fact he had just signed a new deal with Brentford before heading across West London.

A fantastic hat-trick in a game against Southend United at the midway point of his first half of the season-long loan spell singled the Finn out as someone who was set to dominate the league with Wimbledon, and perhaps a player that could help the club push on and achieve an historic finish in the third tier after such a poor start to the campaign with no wins in 11 to kick off 19/20.

And when the goals were backed up with awards and nominations for young player and player of the month in October and December respectively, it really did look like nothing could stop the force of Forss and AFC Wimbledon.

Over-reliance curtailed Forss' AFC Wimbledon spell - things could have ended badly for the Dons

But there did come a rather sudden and abrupt halt to all the promising times that lay ahead for Wimbledon with Forss as their main man up top, as in a clash away at Portsmouth, with the Finn running down the wing for a ball dispatched long over the top, he pulled and looked in a fair amount of pain.

That pain turned out to be a hamstring tear that would put him out for the remainder of the season, and curtail what was looking like a breakout campaign for the former West Brom academy graduate.

Out of the possible 24 matches he could have featured in for the Dons, he played in 19 of them, mostly from the start, and in the run-up to him sustaining his season-ending injury, he was playing the full 90 minutes, and not being substituted, and it was perhaps this over-reliance that caused his tear.

While he was the top goalscorer, and remained so until the season ended with 11, Downes did have other options like Joe Pigott and Michael Folivi to turn to. Albeit they were not scoring goals, but with such a creative team behind them, with the likes of Mitch Pinnock and Anthony Wordsworth supplying in the midfield, all they had to do was feed off of them and do their job as strikers, and by doing that, Forss and Wimbledon would not have had to part ways like they did.

It is perhaps thanks to both Forss' incredible return for such a short span of games, plus the premature end to 19/20 with Covid, that the Dons never did go down, but had the season carried on the way it was going, with the Finn no longer around at the Dons, things could have taken a nosedive.

Wimbledon did have good form post Forss injury, but with them hovering precariously above the drop zone, it was Points Per Game that saved them in the end when the coronavirus forced the EFL to end the season without another ball being kicked, and so had it not been for PPG, who knows what would have happened.

What did happen, though, was a short but sweet Finnish revelation that arrived on the Dons' doorstep at their previous Kingston home, and while he may currently be a bit-part player at Middlesbrough these days thanks to continued injury troubles, he does have his place in AFC Wimbledon history, and that can never be taken away.