Thetownend.com

BREAKING: TotalSport Swindon sources understand Swindon Town have parted company with manager Phil Brown and assistant boss Neil McDonald.

Fucking great!!! :(

You just beat me to it.

As far as i'm concerned good news, however i am concerned who might come in.

We need a positive appointment, someone who can motivate the players so we can kick on.

No hard feeling, I liked the guy (without ever having met him).

But good. It had to be done.

Official news!?

Yup. They’ve got two thirds of a season and a transfer window to play with.
To be fair, his last two appointments haven’t been bad appointments, most were satisfied at the time.
Fair play to Power for acting promptly.

Power decisive this time. Strange timing but the right decision.

Neil Mc going as well is interesting. Would have thought he'd be prime caretaker material.

For whatever reason it wasn't working.  Right decision whether he was pushed or walked.

Yep, I've said it before. I think Power's been quite unlucky in that regard.

Right time in my opinion, Brown had lost the plot with his team selections, they were just a lottery of late with 3 or 4 changes every game. He'd ran out of ideas and his record including last season is horrific.

Good job and all. I don't blame Power for the appointment as he has a proven track record at this level, but something isn't right. If this is true, well done to Power for learning from the LW situation and making a decisive action. Matt Taylor for caretaker manager it looks like to me, maybe give him the opportunity up until Xmas.

fucking hell. did not see this coming

Finally. Good riddance.

sacked, or off to Hull?

Didn't see that coming,  had we lost yesterday then maybe yes, has Power got someone lined up ?, Please not another appointment from within the club.

Not another appointment from within the club? He’s only done it once.

Exactly !.

If true then i’m dissapointed. In as much as I had hoped that someone with his experience and the preseason games I saw indicated to me we’d do well this season. Still as others have indicated it does give us time to get someone in and a tranny window to work with (assuming there are the funds to utilise) to turbo boost our flagging season.

Exactly this. I was pleased when Flitcroft went, with Brown it's more a disappointment that it hasn't worked out for him. But it hasn't and it's not showing any signs of getting much better, if anything becoming more and more desperate. Wish him well for the future

This.

Intriguing. Flitters’ departure last season cost us a play off place, hopefully Brown’s departure doesn’t cost us our FL status. Recent signs were positive; a back to basics approach, progression in the cup therefore I am surprised at this.

Firstly, I think we need a bit more in the way of confirmation on this. However, if true then we need to hear about the circumstances, and the response.

Christ, it's like those episodes of Dr Who where they have 3 old doctors on the screen at the same time

I'm also with you on this.


Whilst we would have been unlucky on the balance of play not to win v. York, there was little conviction evident that our superior play was going to succeed.  I felt a lack of leadership and really a team needs 2 or 3 "leaders".  Taylor can only be one leader and his dwindling pace somewhat mutes the overall benefits.

Had Brown managed to secure a striker at the season's start and had Doughty kept fit, I expect we would have been challenging more.  Risky but it would have been reasonable to hope for more from Richards after last season.  We've had runs worse than the present one, tbf, and the players we do have are imo superior to those last season. I feel they could benefit from a good coach and motivator, which roles Hoddle and Gorman together once fulfilled.

Exhortation to keep plugging away and wayward team selection at this stage of the season was looking incrementally short of restoring much needed confidence.  Bad luck Phil but it may be that Power (or pure chance?) has moved at the right time.

The timing could mean that Power already has his replacement lined up...

Official - https://www.swindontownfc.co.uk/news/2018/november/club-statement-first-team-manager/

Official now.  Presumably Power has somebody lined up for Saturday's big game, as we definitely need a new manager bounce.

You'd imagine that it will be Taylor... although Sherwood could be a possiblity, if his Villa time is spent... probably wouldn't get a job anywhere else.

The picture from that link looks to me like someone is pissing all over the name Swindon, and the flag. Question is: who is doing the pissing?

I liked PB, yet if I'm honest it was a heart over head kind of matter personally. Desperately wanted it to work out for him here. My heart said "He can get us up and build something in L1". My head nagged at me saying "It just isn't happening and we could end up in trouble."

I'm likely the TEFs most rambling, rose-tinted kind of outwardly looking person. It isn't a bad thing but I let my heart rule my head in this case. DF it was a different matter and even though he was a dick, the timing of his departure was all wrong because we may well have held the PO spots last season.

I know it says '...relieved of duties.' but if PB has decided to walk, I give him a lot of respect for actually realising he hasn't been able to make it work here. There are many that would stay in post and let the ship sink - then fuck off out. This gives us a great chance to find someone else with a Transfer Window and near 2/3rds of the season still to go. New manager bounce and all that. It could be that if this is a "mutual consent" departure then Power may already have chosen his next manager? We can but hope.

Wish PB all the best, it never got going (or he never got us going) but he comes across as a decent bloke. A part of me thinks that he is back off up to Hull in some capacity and things may have been agreed in the background. Can't see Power sacking the man if he can sniff compensation on the horizon. One good thing though - Power has learnt his lesson of being indecisive. The LW saga can still give one nightmares, I'm glad he's realised that. It's a positive element to the largely reclusive owner.

With a line drawn under the very short PB managerial spell...two questions;

Who would you like to take over?

&

Who do you think we will get?

I assume (and would be happy with) Taylor. Ben Chorley has been mentioned here before, but I’m not aware he’s ever so much as coached. Then there is the Irish guy who was linked when Brown got the job... Another week of fun.

On paper I thought Brown was a good appointment.
His inability to even get that usual ‘bounce’ last season was alarming but everyone was willing to cut him some slack.
This season we’ve got worse where as oddly I think our squad is better.

Sacked not quit then from the sounds of it

It's a strange scenario isn't it? It just hasn't clicked for whatever reason(s).

our midfield is better.
the jury is out on the squad as a whole

It's DV's interpretation as a non attender... the reality is somewhat different. The squad is weaker... hardly surprising as Power said he'd have to cut the wage bill as a consequence of not going back up.  Therefore it isn't surprising that we aren't doing so well.

Whoever comes in will still have the fundamental squad weakness until January when they may be able to do something about it.

Better keepers, better midfielders.
Think you could make a good case for the defence & strikers too

I'd love to see your justification for the strikers

Adebayo > Norris
Richards - Richards

That’s really it isn’t it?

Clearly a lack of depth there obviously

Vigouroux is the same, RC-C was Ok for a bit, we offered Moore a contract, but Franchise paid above to sit on their bench.

We've more midfielders, but Dunne is still important.

It's probably not a coincidence that Norris, Preston and Mullin, as well as Moore and loanees Kellan Gordon and Timi Elsnik, are all at clubs either in the Div 4 auto slots or PO slots.

RC-C was OK for about a minute when he made a last minute save against Notts County. Apart from that he was abysmal.

we've replaced Mullin and Norris with adebayo, and aside from the first few games he's not really fired better than Norris.

Richards is worse than Richards was last year

there no doubt both our keepers this year are well above RCC and Moore.

but RCC was fine up to I think it was the Lincoln game, terrible there after

We are comfortably weaker - Preston and Norris were a key part of the spine and have not been replaced with like for like quality. Understandable given the reduction in the playing budget.

As has been shown his stats for last season were the same as Vigouroux. He certainly wasn't great, but we're in Div 4, so you tend not to get much as a back up keeper.

You can’t surely be intimating RC-C was on a par with Vigs?

We never played Mullin upfront anyway and if Adebayo took penalties he’d have just as many goals as Norris.

Last season R C-C won 50% of the league games he played... Vigs < 50%. Therefore not on a par but better.

Goals are goals doesn't matter how you get them.... but stats tell us we've never scored fewer than this in a Div 4 season 17 games in.

Therefore it tells you we are weaker than any previous Div 4 side of our history.  Which is why Brown has been sacked... that isn't a surprise.

Whether the new man or woman has a magic wand we'll have to wait and see. 

We could run a sweep stake on how long the next muppet lasts. Never known a 3 year period where STFC has had so managers. This must be LP's last chance to get it right, he's spent more money sacking managers than buying players!

It’s tell us our manager is shit & we should sack him....oh wait...

He beat the mighty York City yesterday in the cup and paid the price. LP has his eye on the FA cup prize and wants to see the town lift the trophy for the first time in its history. PB was doomed by his own success.

I know BBC Sport site can be a bit shit at times but even going to the Swindon Town pages, there is no mention of PB's departure.

It's not really that important really.

It is in the interests of the STFC specific pages really, it is really.

Otherwise why have individual team weblinks, really.

That’s a ridiculous extrapolation. The keeper, more than any other player, is so dependent on other players’ performances.

Have you ever seen Vigs make a succession of howlers game after game. That one decision of Flitcroft to banish him was a major reason we didn’t make the POs.

Talking of players, I wonder if Dave andDoughty will make miraculous recoveries in time for Saturday.

Still nothing this morning....

Which takes no account whatever of the opposition we played in those games, defenders available in front of them etc etc. Completely meaningless extrapolation and you know it.

 Vigs and R C-C played in similar circumstances... the one who suffered was Moore, as he had a change of manager and then, the loss of Preston and Lancashire to contend with.... which goes some way to explain why his win rate was much lower than the other 2.

 I wasn't convinced pre season by those claiming we had a better squad than last season.... and I'm still not.  However hopefully the new boss will have the magic wand to suddenly start getting more out of what we've got, and so show I made a misjudgement.

Wasn't expecting this news at all, especially after the last few results. That said, I think my feelings on the matter are similar to others - probably the right dcision with no hard feelings towards PB.

Like others, the timing suggests to me that Power has a replacement lined up. I'd be disappointed with Taylor but that's not to say it wouldn't work out.

Timing wise, I think Power has noticed that we're in a fight for FL status, and this messes with his property plans.  Why would a non league club want a swish new facility, when something more modest might suffice.

I'd agree with that, but disposing of a manager on a Sunday after a cup win seems a bit odd unless your plan is in place. We'll find out soon enough.

Why would it interfere with his property plans..... I can see no way it would make an ounce of difference....

So SBC, as guardians of the CG, would be happy to sell the ground to the fella who'd just lost the Town FL status, after about 100 years.  I know SBC make some very strange decisions....

After the Col U game, Brown suddenly changed his tune on whether he needed new players in January. He'd previously said he didn't but suddenly now did. Could this have been significant in Power's decision to sack him? Power feels these players should be good enough, doesn't he. (Many of us may not agree.) There was already awkwardness over the keeper situation, which was seen to be losing Power money in terms of Vig's transfer value, so this may have been a final straw? Whatever the ins and outs of it, any new manager is more likely to be selected in the Williams mould? Ie, be grateful, shut up and get on with it.

Details made the BBC Web site by 9:00, obviously had to wait until the lower league correspondent got into work.

You're a bit deluded if you think someone is sitting there on Remembrance Sunday afternoon waiting to upload a Swindon Town manager change article.

That's what Twitter is for, for those who can't wait.

Really

But that's not the manner in which you justified your original post which seemed to be wittering on about the training ground?

I witter not... property plans, seems to me very specific... there are two, Highworth and the CG. 

Don't think you can blame Brown for playing Mcormick,  at the time he was a much more commanding and confidenf keeper than Vigeroux, Once in place it would have been hard to remove him whilst he was continually keeping clean sheets,  besides that Vigeroux was keeping the bench warm in Chile for half the time McCormick was playing.
Talking of Vigerouxs howlers, how about Saturday ?, surely if he's that good then a keeper of his 'said' calibre would surely have put the ball round the post not parried it straight to an opposing striker ?. In think its pretty obvious we're only playing him now in order to get his price up ready for the transfer window,  but let's not get too excited,  how many bids did we get for him in the last transfer window ?.

PB seems a nice genuine guy, and I'm sorry that he couldn't/wouldn't sign a good left back, and a big lump at CF  to hold up the ball and bring others in to play. . Things might have been different. Possibly not though....

I agree totally.

That did pass my mind too, both missing for what appeared to be minor injuries, Woolery too maybe?

This would appear to be the case, but if he has anyone lined up I would be surprised, he hasn't seem to work that way so far.

I, like many, thought PB was a decent enough appointment at the time, he talks a good game and is a nicer character than Flipflop was, at times we played some brilliant football under him, at times it was as bad as under Paul Hart, awful.

The players never seemed comfortable with his tactics, he stuck by under performing players for too long, he picked the wrong starting line up too often and didn't seem to know his best side.

The timing, after a cup win, seems a little weird but the decision has been made, lets see who comes in now.

BTW had a quick read of the FB page......"Power out, hes sacked our best manager in years" a week after "Power out, hes sticking with our worst manager in years" posts by the same person says it all.

He can't do anything right for some fans, everything he does is shit, in their eyes.

Flitcroft binned off Vigs, because he didn't meet his standards of professionalism... it would have been best all round if he could have got a new club, but no takers. Now it is possible that he may have learned something from his Waterford time, but his form is still indifferent.

It's a shame, presumably now he'll be off with Chile so LMc comes back in.

I made the mistake of reading some adver comments. After the third one mentioning that power must be going with Wellens because he's top of the bookies odds. I decided to stop reading and look for some strong looped rope on ebay. I really struggle to understand how people are actually so stupid.

I've read somebody say we're fucked because we will go down without a manager. I've a hunch, though, that the intention will be to hire a new one.

Really.

We live in a 24hrs world today, not everything is 9-5, really.

We also have remote working and Sky Sports News (one of their major competitors) had it posted yesterday evening. If they can't be arsed to get someone to effectively copy and paste (which is what the report is on their now) from the STFC website, with an added "more details to follow..." line of text, then they may a well give up now.

It's hardly asking them to be innovative. Really.

Don’t be fucking ridiculous, why on earth would we do that?

hehe, I tried to plant the seed it's a power conspiracy to make the real appointment more palatable earlier.

The timing could also suggest it could be the other way round, bring in someone else who can assess the squad for a decent amount of time, determine the what players they need and use the January window to do some deals.

Ironically we had better squads when Power interfered with player recruitment.

Hmmm, every time we’ve been relegated we’ve had a manager.
Maybe we’ll go without.
Could make all the difference

It's debatable as to whether Luke was a manager....

 :clap: Indeed. He wasn't from the same mould of either DW or AW for that matter. Nice bloke - not manager material.

I could reply but trying to debate with you is like trying to with Theresa May.....

Teresa's a very nice lady, she wears french nickers stockings and suspenders. Now you've got that image stuck in your head

Phil's got a new job... as manager of FC Pune City in India.

I wish him nothing but the best.

#bleedorange is their hashtag.

 ;D

I'm now convinced, based on absolutely nothing, that Martin Smith will end up at Pune City.