Thetownend.com

I can't help but think we reached a high point with the game at Tranmere which sadly saw the end of Paolo and Fabrizio's time in charge. The culmination of their incredibly strict and single minded efforts to drag the whole team kicking and screaming to the top of the league. I'm not saying Paolo's time in charge was without fault or that every decision he and his team made was right but I think even his detractors will admit grudgingly that he was a force of nature that did some very positive things for the club.

To get to Wembley in his first season in charge got the whole Town excited, winning League 2 and getting us to 1st place in League 1 wasn't bad either.

I don't really want to comment about the new board because it doesn't seem fair when they've been here such a short space of time but I'm worried we will now slip down to mid table and then further down next season with a very average manager appointed. I feel we're headed for mediocrity without Paolo and his team, memories of Paul Hart and how disastrous that was are still fresh in my mind.

Some will say the way Paolo handled some of players was wrong but the best managers over the years have frequently fallen out with and shipped out players who they think haven't displayed the right attitude. The best managers deal with these things decisively and quickly and that is exactly what Paolo did. I don't think anyone misses Leon Clarke.

The finance and sustainability aspect is important and I understand that too much money was spent but the previous board did ultimately have the final say on purchases so there clearly was a communication breakdown. Paolo issuing a lot of statements and deadlines did not help and it's now clear the statements pissed off Andrew Black and probably just galvanised his determination to sell as quickly as possible.

It's all very sad really but I'd love it if Paolo and his team returned, however unlikely that is now.

Why is the matchday thread blocked?

i want to know this also

I wondered that. Wanted feedback from people who went. Sounded dire but good to get perspective.

I don't know. But I wanted to reply to your comment about the 'jitters' by saying:

Its more like 'my football team's got the yipps!'

Me too also as well

tldr

dwmftw4la !

BRING DI CANIO BACK! LET'S START PLAYING FOOTBALL AGAIN AND WIN THIS DAMN LEAGUE!

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/bringpaoloback/

Me too also as well additionally

Is JJ876 the same person as International Robin, that started the Di Canio petition? Someone's got a severe case of man love.

(Dont waste my fucking time with 4 letter abbreviations !)

Dunno. I didn't bother reading his post.

the answer is yes.

Some retards (like DV) have short memories. We've been top of League one at Christmas at least a hundred times in the last fifteen years.

I think its closer to zero but will bow down your obviously superior knowledge Ben...

Although I'm also not certainly you have 100 Christmas' in 15 years...
 

Congrats on noticing that.

I wonder if Andy King had the backing to fuck off Cureton and Thorpe and then follow then up with other signings we'd have been in this position in the first place.
We'd probably be in the conference by now if I'm honest.

PDC didn't get us to the top of League One. He threw his toys out of the pram while we were in 6th place.

No. In terms of form the team peaked over Xmas and New Year. I've just posted in the (more nauseating than salt water gargle) "Bring Back Dicanio" thread about the form since then, which is largely 1-1 and 0-0 draws, one 1-0 victory and the Tranmere and Shrews games as stand outs.

Ritchies creativity was missed far more last night than PDC's screaming and furniture biting.

For what's it's worth I partly agree with you about last night but it's never black and white and we missed a number of factors, PDC included. A number of elements make up a team. "Richie's creativity" didn't seem to help Bournemouth out too much last night so i would suggest that in reality no one individual is a messiah.

Although Gareth Bale is making a pretty decent stab of proving otherwise at Spurs at the moment.

This.

disagree. He prepared the side for tranmere and his staff carried out his instructions.

I can barely believe some of the anti PDC sentiment on here...

I was one of his biggest fans and backed him to the hilt WHILE HE WAS OUR MANAGER.

I am grateful to his getting us where we are but I am massively pissed off at his selfish attitude and what appears to be gamesmanship when the chips were down.

He quit us he was not sacked, he did not give the new board a chance to prove themselves to him.

I think he has shown a childish attitude in breaking in to the CG and taking things without the owners knowledge.

I am fed up of him signing players who he then fell out with and shipped out for nothing or decided they werent good enough for the first team players such as Connell, Risser, Clarke, Coke, Comazzi, Esajas, Lanzano, Kerrouche, Cibbochi, Atiku, Boatang, Tehoue, Abdulla, Montano, Bessone, Martin & Cox.

Also add to it the players alreadyhere who he fell out with and got rid of like Caddis.

This obviously cost us a fortune and if the rumours (hey its good enough for the doubters to spread rumours about the new owners) are true about him asking for a pay rise to stay at the club then he was bang out of order.

Things like the fall out with Fodder at Preston, the aftermath of McCormack having a baby that made him fall out with the players prior to the game at Gillingham, his taking off of players after only 25 minutes of a game such as Kerrouche at Rovers. Not to mention the Clarke debacle on the pitch vs Southampton.

Time to move on and thanks for the good times but not for the bad times which when I look back were actually numerous.

I think its time for a new era for the club with a new manager.

Well said, Peter - I completely agree

We knew whenever PDC left it wouldn't be nice - but it's happened in a worse way than we maybe originally feared and the way he behaved spoilt any legacy he may have left for me.

"spoilt any legacy he may have left for me"  ?

In five/ten years times I will be looking back on the last season with fond memories, not all bitter and twsited about how it ended.
 

Hence why I said "for me"

Possibly, but it will always be tarnished for me in the way he left, as it was when Hoddle left which I am only now just getting over after 20 years almost.

Oh and thanks for calling me bitter and twisted.

From another thread.....


This.

Anyone that doubts the reality of this should take five minutes to visit the transfers page from last season on Swindon-Town-FC.co.uk and look at the list and see if any of you can even remember who all of them are; Ethnikos Piraeus anyone? Lander Gabilondo? No? What about Ibrahim Atiku, or Etienne Esajas?

There's about 35 players that came in last season alone, and less than a third of them are still with the club. When PDC was here about half of those that were weren't playing, some out on loan or rotting in the stiffs.

Of the players we paid a fee for:

Connell - £100k plus - released 12 months after being signed, made 23 starts
Luke Rooney - £100k plus - was out on loan and on the way out under PDC, has made 14 starts
Cox - £50k - out on loan 6 months after arriving and on his way to being released, started 2 games
Collins - £140k - actually still here, playing and scoring (HEY!)
Archibald-Hennville - £200k - OK he's had injuries, but he barely got a sniff when he was fit, 2 starts.

We're no quite QPR but then we didn't have the same kind of backing.

The comparison with QPR is probably appropriate, if you assume Di Canio learnt some/much of his management approach from 'Arry.

The lubricant bill for the reviolving door must have been huge!

Seriously though, this sums up my biggest reservation about PdC - his scattergun approach to signing players is/was completely unsustainable.

Oh yeah I forgot Gabilondo and for that matter Magera.

Who?

They are a Greek football club apparently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnikos_Piraeus_F.C.

Pretty sure they are a team (Greek) so I assume thats a mistake.

Paolo was never given big money to invest in quality players.....that meant what money he spent(about half a million) was invested in players that were a gamble to sign.......he got rid of hell of a lot of deadwood when he arrived which is never mentioned by those who choose to slag him off.

Many of last nights side were languishing in reserve sides when Paolo signed them...Alan Mac,Ward,Foderhingham etc.

Foderingham alone is probably worth more than Paolo spent in his entire spell here....so to suggest his scattergun approach was a failure is wrong on two counts....one is that where we are in the league...secondly Collins is probably worth three times what we spent for him along with Fods,Devera etc means that the signing he spent a little money on certainly was good buisness.

Many of you forget that this was his first venture into management and yes harsh lessons were learnt at times.
As i say the last two matches show me just how much he got out of....quite frankly ordinary players.

How a group of fans can slag off a man who left his team on top of the league amazes me....astounds me.
He had his reasons for walking away....whether or not we as fans agree with that should not hide the fact that is when he left we were in our highest position for years.
And he has left a squad whos value is a lot higher in money terms than what he paid for by a long way.

That's the first time I've read a post with a bit of sense and balance on here for a while.

Great post, leefer. Can't argue with any of that.

The fact we spent nearly half a million on agent's (NB that's deliberately singular rather than plural) fees alone suggests he was given plenty of money to spend. If he didn't spend it on quality players, well.....

You are so bitter that it's funny.

Spot on.

How is stating a fact bitter?

:nod:

jayocaitchenn you are the most juicy and delicious of a salty lemon.

All you've done in the past week is slag him off constantly.

I was/am very forgiving at PDC's signings because he was a rookie, but to suggest he didn't have enough money to make good signings is simply baffling.

And yet we won the league, money well spent in my book. And before someone says what about all the embargo/administration stuff I would rather be a league higher with all that stuff to worry about then be in League 2 operating on an Oxfordesque 'sustainable' model.

I'm sorry but that's bollocks. Paolo was probably given more money to spend in the transfer market than any manager at this club in the last 10 years. I can't think of a single player we've signed for £200k plus since the days of McMahon, that wasn't funded by a player sale. Ferry and Caddis, bought out of the money received from Cox, Ritchie from a fraction of the Austin income.

PDC expected to buy who he wanted, and discard what didn't work. And the first time someone had to be sold to balance the books he throws a paddy and quits.

How much did Wilson spend out of interest?

Not his biggest fan, then?   ;D

Good to see you back on here.

Good effort, Lani. I've mentioned him 5 times in my last 30 posts.

AND you've liked my facebook posts on the subject so don't pretend you're playing devil's advocate when you are just trying to fish.

And how did he do that exactly? His own coaching team admit he missed three days of training in the week leading up to that game, presumably because he was in a strop?

About 750k with a wage bill of about 4M. So quite a lot

Is it that obvious? I need to work on my trolling...

Better Swindon managers than him have put up with a lot more shit than he's had to and have got on with their jobs, and done it better.

Not worlds apart then. Any idea on the agents fees from this time?

You nearly had me till I twigged who you are.

I just don't get how anyone can slate him for his achievements, the way he left possibly yes, but the way he galvanised the team and how he got them to play was pretty remarkable.

Anyone who went to the game last night will have seen a team of players who looked like they'd never even met each other before, let alone played together. The first half in particular they just looked like a dis-organised rabble who didn't know what to do, and the senior players spent most of the half berating each other.

I honestly think we have a team of fairly average players that he got the very most out of.

Yes, we had some bad results when he was here, but I don't honestly believe that we ever looked so clueless as we did last night.

All of which was funded by player sales. Cox and Austin alone bringing in more than £3m. How much goes out isn't really the most important thing it's the net transfer spending.

We've probably made a profit in terms of transfer fees every year for years until PDC who's sold nobody for any real money since he's been in the job, and quit the first time someone forced him to.

I'll be back. Must. try. harder.

Who was it who used to be called Dave and had Rodney as their avatar? Every post was funny as a result, whoever that was, please do it again. Or alternatively mods just change someone's name and avatar permanently to that. Dostoyevsky would be good, we would see a whole new side to Rodney, mid-life crisis Rodney.

the power of speech. Still did his homework-tactics for the game

Pericarp wasn't it?

He was Trigger wasn't he. This was a while back, maybe 2 years ago.

Pericarp prepared the team for the Tranmere game? Wow.

And he did what exactly? Come into the dressing room ten minutes before the game and do some sort of vulcan mindmeld with each player?

The coach can do his homework on a side, but without the training sessions to actually work on the things that he has in mind to exploit their weaknesses and guard against their strengths I'm not sure what fucking use that is. I think the coaching staff did their job in the run up to the Tranmere game, and did it well, following the same pattern of preparation as before.

Picarricarp?

To answer the question in the Thread Title, I agree that Di Canio leaving probably was the peak of the season so far.

He would have spoken to his staff for sure to give instructions and this has already been confirmed. Wouldn't have been surprised if he had spoken to players too.
He would have been doing his homework on the match before he quit. Someone so dedicated and a workaholic like Di Canio I think would have been ahead of the game myself. Wouldn't leave these things late.

You'd think that such a "dedicated" "workaholic" might have found the time to get to the fucking training ground wouldn't you?

Are you basing your assumptions about what he did leading up to the game on anything other than pure speculation?

I wish that we could have Di Canio back, for no other reason than to make you fuck off again...

He didn't go to training for reasons which have been done to death. Until he did though he put in the hours and dedication to the job.

The only thing i'm assuming is that he may have spoken to the players(or some of them)
The rest is guaranteed to be true. The preparation for a game at the table toppers would have been undertaken for plenty of time prior. That's glaringly obvious.
Even his biggest critics will know how hard he worked and his attention to detail etc.

:D Nice to have you back Ben.

he is DV Canio now

Which are? 'Cause he was feeling a bit sulky about something that hasn't been fully explained other than "promises not being kept"?

He was with the players up until the 5pm on the Monday and he picked the team. He took training as normal.

He missed training the previous week up until the Friday.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are we agreed that the regular triaing sessions are necessary, and that it's beat for the head of the coaching staff to be there?

If so I need to hear a decent excuse for not being there. I'm told it's been discussed to death but I've no idea what the reason was.

Had he resigned at that stage and had to be talked around?

He resigned on the Tuesday, didn't come in on the Wednesday and Thursday but was there on the Friday to discuss with Jed. He then took the team Saturday (week when we didn't have a game) and was with the team all Monday until he quit.

He prepared the team for the Tranmere game, that's what I'm getting at.

Tell him to change his name back to Dave.

 In all likelihood...yes. We are a Div 3 club, a couple of managers King and Wilson have taken us close, but that final push is difficult..PdC failed as well, but in a different way.

The key to the next few months will be consolidation next season in Div 3 and avoiding the sort of slide which happened last time we got close, but also failed.

We've got a few on the books, who look like they'll hit the  :pint: without a disciplinarian around, so dangerous times.

I have to agree with Reg, consolidation will be fine for this season with a possible play off push next season should we be lucky enough to land another Kingy or Wilson.

Why would we want to consolodate when we're 3 points off the top? Yes, we may well struggle to make the play-off's this season, but just possibly the new manager will come in and put us back on track! The same players proved they're good enough against Tranmere, and with one or two additions I don't see why we can't stay in touch.

Good post agree with the points made.

Have  only just seen Leefers Post and got to say probably one of the best I've read.

If you agreed with his politics, would you still try and find any little thing to try and prove that he was clueless ?
He won the league in his first season in management, and left us well placed in his second.

I suspect we've all gone off him a bit recently (me included), but fuck sake, surely he left the club in a better place than when he joined ???

(you not being around for fucking starters)

agree with this, as for lumps, swindon supporter, I THINK NOT

 Have only just seen Leefer's post aswell  and it's exactly what i was trying to say but never did. This is the last i will say on Pdc , he did us proud but we move on and i hope he does not tarnish his reputation anymore with silly threats ( if true ), even the half of West Ham fans who wanted him are backing off .