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Lindsey needs resuits in the next 3 games- if things don’t improve he won’t be here come October.

2 red cards, not a single goal scored just ain’t acceptable  

Don’t think it’s going to make much difference who the manager is whilst Sandro is doing the recruiting.

I thought Sandro came highly recommended!

I still have no clue where this is all going.

I don't have a good feeling. But its far too early to know, be honest.

I tend to agree that something feels a bit off, but you have to have hope right? There seem to be a lot of people around who have made their minds up that this can now be nothing other than a disaster. It's three games in, one of them with a reserve side and one where we didn't lose. It feels far too early to be judging any of this stuff.

There's just a... weird atmosphere around our fanbase at the moment.

Let’s just say if this squad and management team was assembled with Power in charge people would have not been very happy

Last season didn’t help one iota. To me it is blindingly obvious. Last season we should have been flirting with relegation to the NL. Instead we just miss automatic promotion by one measly win. Not to difficult to gauge the fans expectations this season is it? Expectation v reality equals…..

I could take Lindsey if he brought in a quality assistant who would add value, whether that's an experienced head (e.g. Malcolm Crosby in the Kingy days) or an up and coming progressive coach (Williams for Cooper).

Unfortunately I think Lindsey has sewn his own destiny by bringing in two wide boys with no pedigree and the intellect of a shoe.

Any Swindon Manager in charge of our team when they are in their second season, or more, at this level would have similar expectations.  Mid table this season is abject failure, historically speaking.

I wonder whether last seasons backroom appointments of Marshall and Lindsey were decided by Garner or put in place by above (Chorley?)

You’d have thought the boardroom would insist on an experienced no.2 given Lindsey’s rookie status as a manager…

We have gone backwards though, expectations or not. Possession is worse, passing accuracy is worse, shots at goal etc is worse, goals conceded is worse, discipline is worse. This whole stats thing seems to be bollocks.

 :clap: :clap:

Come on, the assistant manager has managed Welling United and Bangladesh who are ranked 192 in the world!

:Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

How could I forget

He needs 3 competitive performances in the next 3 games at the very minimum.

If we continue with this turgid, clueless tripe then he has to go.

I don't expect us to be world-beaters or even top of this shite league, but I'm struggling to see how there can be 2 teams worse than us at the mo.

Midfield is basically the same as last year, a team that scored the most goals, but it looks toothless this year and creates nothing.

Keep hearing that there's goals in this team and I agree, but not playing like this there isn't.

Is it the tactics - if, indeed, we actually have any tactics - or do some of last year’s players not fancy it this. The trio of Reed, Williams and McKirdy are shadows of themselves and that can’t all be down to Payne leaving.

I was bored shitless with a lot of Garnerball last season but at least it was a discernible method of trying to win matches. I’ve seen nothing in the 2 league matches so far that we have any ‘style’ at all. It’s almost a turn up and play approach.

Whatever it is the players don’t look like their buying into it.

There's no lack of effort, it's probably a combination of things.

Playing people in new positions without clear instruction, (lots of voices on the bench).  Combined with an inexperienced setup that doesn't appear to have that desire or tactical nous to win football matches above all else.

Exactly this people may not have been a fan on Garners play style but at least the players had direction and knew what they were doing.

We are a rudderless ship and although the players put in the effort if they don’t have direction or purpose then the players are going to perform as individuals rather than as a team.  

Has anyone else noticed there’s no team
spirit like last year?

I would hope Scott takes this as a learning curve or he will fast lose the support of the crowd

Ridiculous thread! Wait for 10 games. Then wait a bit more. Remember Bristol Rovers last year.

I would say it's far from ridiculous NMH. Given the putrid and clueless nature of the displays on the pitch, the nature of SL's appointment and peoples' growing unease about what's happening behind the scenes, it's a totally valid discussion to be having.

Like all, I’d love Lindsey to succeed and to be proved wrong, however this stinks of cheap both with the management and with the squad. I can’t believe that the squad wage bill is higher than last years, as I said in another post if this was the squad and management team with Power in charge, serious questions would be asked. We’ve done a great job in reducing the debt, but something all about it doesn’t sit right with me.

I can’t remember a manager ever being under pressure this early before in all my years of following Swindon.
I’m one of them that isn’t convinced too, and I’m normally in the give him a chance camp, but something just isn’t right in my opinion,

This 100%.
I did raise issues from what I heard that we were reducing our cost base.
Sure, speculation but it’s raising concerns as you note.

So what does Clem do if sacks Lindsey? We’ve just been through a recruitment process whereby those interested were deemed not good enough or those that were were put off by wages, Sandro or somesuch.

Who’s going to apply now that didn’t a few weeks ago?

We'll be bottom in 10 games. Can't see what will change, can you?

Sol Campbell.  :D

New manager starts with an away loss and a home draw in August, followed by a weakened team going down in the League Cup.  Even our dearly departed Reg normally waited 3 or 4 League games before airing his doom laden anxieries for the season.

This kind of talk is not great for the morale of a squad or confidence of a manager in a new role.

Even so, I'm very sadly joining on board too.

The loss of Ben Chorley, the budget talk, the (not so) new face as manager [and the sheer time it took before deciding to appoint the assistant coach didn't exactly speak of Lindsey "demanding" the job] and the apparent quality of last year's first teamers as compared to this year's have all been concerning #me too.

So come on Lindsey and squad, make me eat my negativity!

Clem will end up paying him off and decreasing the managerial budget even more & we’d probably end up with Mildy and Peaks in charge…

…what he should do is go get Duncan Ferguson

You did, and got pelters for it for quite a while if I remember right..  now everybody seems to be singing off of a similar sheet, funny how that goes..

The club needs to get it's shit together tbh.
Right from day one we've been an absolute mess with kits and recruitment.
The pre-season was a joke and there is no unity within the team.  To me it seems their is a clear divide between new players and existing.  Whether that's to do with the recruitment or existing players promised things that have happened I just don't know. 
For me Reedy should have been captain not McDonald.  It's a bit of a kick in the teeth to the likes of Reedy, McKirdy and Williams.
Ultimately the buck stops at Lindsay to sort this out and bring some unity back to the team and get them playing as a team.

Couple of wins and we’ll all be singing EIEIEIO

Rovers spent big in January and it worked, it doesn't always and I doubt we would want or even should do that.

I hope Lyndsey turns it around but it needs to happen quickly, it would be a shame to see us waste the bigger gates and positivity from last year.

What credentials does Reed have to be captain of this football club just out of interest?

Same could be said for McDonald though.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned but Reedy, McKirdy & Williams are already established players.  To bring a new player in and make him captain is a 2 fingers up to them

He was here last year…that’s it…

Also it’s MacDonald

It was in reply to an above poster. Forgot to quote him. Unless i've been wooshed by your comment.

No quite literally Reeds only being mentioned as a captain because he was here last season.
He’s shown absolutely nothing to suggest he’s a leader and captain material

Can anyone remember the last time we sacked a manager mid season and things actually improved after the new appointment? I can’t.

got pelters from me for saying that the wage bill was being slashed and the team would be full of loans. The team may not be performing but theres no way that starting 11 saturday should be playing that poor.

For me there is far too many people getting involved and the manager isn't strong enough to get across a clear message, Clem needs to get back and give them a talk i think

Brown to Wellens? We were 17th when we sacked Brown.

My comment was more aimed at the posters now questioning the budget and saying Lindsey was the cheap option and agreeing with DOB that he called it out a while ago.  You know that I thought that the pelters he was getting at the time from a few posters was unwarranted but it's all about opinions.

Sacked Phil Brown (21 points from 17 games at the start of 18/19 season), and appointed Richie Wellens (43 points from 29 games from that point on).

And Danny Wilson taking over from Maurice Malpas over Xmas/New Year was a masterstroke also, kept us up in League 1.

Both of those managers, in taking over mid-season, laid foundations for success in the season that followed.

If Lindsey had appointed what appear to be astute, informed assistants with a philosophy, I think the fan base may have more faith in what’s going on. The unease is not helped by the fact they (apparently, I didn’t see it) are acting like goons during matches, and have no professional credentials between the three of them. Garner and Marshall’s track record at proper clubs (Palace, Stoke, WBA, Reading) far surpassed this lot (FGR, Chatham, Welling, Bangladesh).

That’s a fair point, we forget Scott Marshall has had a very good coaching career of his own. Out of the 3 that were on the coaching staff last season we are left with the one with the weakest CV by a country mile, on paper Lindsey just doesn’t look like this amazing coach some claimed and so far the reality seems the same.

which begs the question, what on earth was Sandro doing all that time??

interviewing sodding Caddis.

Don't get me wrong, I bloody love Caddis. But he should never ever have been on any managerial list. right now..

Listened to Sandro’s interview last night and was quite worried by how much of the football side he is having a say on. Maybe I didn’t quite understand his position previously, but for him to be saying things like “Iandolo is one of the best left sided players in the league,” is this all based on data or his personal views? Seems like a recipe for disaster having someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience working at the top of a football club, with head coach who also has no experience of being a head coach. I just don’t get any of this…

His role as per the press release when hired said "in his new role, Di Michele will oversee all football operations including recruitment, medical, analysis, the academy and will work closely with The Head Coach and Chief Executive Officer Rob Angus."

So yes, he's got quite a big say on the football side. Equivalent to Chorley before. Not sure complimenting a player who's signed a new contract is exactly out of his remit.

I'm not sure he'd have done any worse so far.

Look, it's shit right now and i'm worried. However...

That day we spanked Rovers. They looked horrific. If you told me they'd go up automatically after that game I'd of laughed at you and stuck my house on them not even making playoffs.

So we've already seen an example of a team who had a bunch of players who looked like they'd never played together, with a manager nobody wanted and an owner under serious pressure with the fan base succeed.

It can be done.

But they gambled by spending loads of money and changing pretty much the entire team in january.   We won't nor should do that. 

I get the concerns.  The stats look horrible.  And if there is a plan, it's not yet clear what it is.

But...way too early for conversations about the manager, for me anyway.  It's not even mid-August yet.  I'm prepared to believe that there's a plan there that will emerge in time.  There may even be a missing signing or two that will move the dial.  Hope the majority of fans can get behind the manager as 'critical friends'.

I remember Peter Reid being sacked at Man City after four games, the previous two seasons they had finished 5th & 9th in the top flight with him as manager.

After he was sacked they finished 16th, 17th & 18th (which saw them relegated) and then spent 5 or 6 years outside the top flight trying to get back.

Not sure that was all down to him being sacked, but always felt like they didn't give him time

This is Swindon, have you ever known us to do what Rovers did? Me neither.

The season we got record a points total

I come on here for the more well thought out comments and opinions compared to the ones on FB and Twitter and am seeing, in the main, the concerns which I totally agree with.

Yes, it is early days and it only takes one good result to change attitudes and off we jolly well go, but only having seen the Cardiff pre-season game I cannot add any views regarding the performances and those who have seen all three competitive games so far are not a happy set of fans is apparent.

Like all clubs, rumours, second guessing and information from those "itk" is part and parcel of being a supporter but I do get a sense of things not being quite right and want to see my club in a far better place very quickly.

   

Not really true…they signed three players and got lucky in that the one they signed in the last hour of the window after missing out on other targets (Elliot Anderson on loan from Newcastle) turned out to be a class act.

Their turnaround was as much down to Barton finally getting things right rather than splashing the cash in January - they didn’t.

Well at least the plus side of the tactics being diabolically shit at the moment is there is a lot of scope to change and improve. Chop chop though Scott.

No they didn't. What are you on about?

They bought in Jon Nolan on a free who played about 2 games
Anderson and Connolly on loan
Ryan loft for a fee from Scunthorpe who was largely shit.

Not sure how that's a load of money and a whole new team.

Edit: Didn't see the post 2 above mine explaining this.

So once in the last 100 years?

This season? As we slide into the non league?!!

We are three games in for Fucks sake.

Give the bloke a chance.

The problem Lindsey has got himself into is that we have 3 games in 8 days coming up, 2 of which are at home. So he has no time to really work on or change anything. If we don’t get a positive result from any of them then his position will really be on shaky ground as supporters will be restless, the next week like it or not is massive for him.

First result and performance was poor.

Second result was meh. McKirdy let us down. Showed something second half.

Last night was a heavily changed side with a few kids thrown in. Maybe a bad decision to make wholesale changes but he's vindicated if we go to Carlisle and win imo.

Poor start but three games for a new squad is no time to judge. Im currently frustrated but far from worried. At the end of next week I might be with 3 games coming up(!).

Personally I don't get this play a weakened team because the players are tired from playing 45 minutes with ten men against Salford or saving them for the next league game after all they're fit young men who should be able to cope. Some of my best memories are watching Town in the league cup especially 1979 when we beat Sheffield Wednesday, Stoke and a top class Arsenal team before narrowly missing out on a league cup final.

Lou Macari had the players super fit during his time here and I don't ever remember them being fatigued or rested when there was a chance of progressing to the next round with the chance of pulling a big team out of the hat and bringing more cash into the club. If we were in Europe I may look at things differently😀

Football has changed, clubs have a duty of care to players.  Things like players playing through the pain barrier or playing players that have come out the end of the previous game beyond what sport scientists deem appropriate is counter productive to both player and club in the long run.

It's like the fans of old cars saying cars wouldn't crumble in their day and were built to last, shame the drivers and passengers didn't whenever there were serious accidents.

It doesn't matter what used to happen, players often sank their body weight in beer throughout the week but you wouldn't advocate that now.

I don't remember any complaints about injuries, fatigue etc from the mid 80's onwards sometimes I think football has become too complicated.

That's because if you spoke up back then your were a pansy or a fairy or some such insult, it's not just football that has changed, society has.  Men would be setting up their own gallows back then to show any sign of 'weakness'.

I'm not sure that's true in the mid to late 80's onwards maybe in the 70's

My bad, I was going on the fact that the team that played us in January only shared 5 players with the one we dicked a couple of months earlier.

Looks like Barton changed formation and players to get them there including moving from a back 3 to a 4!

In a fairly recent Loathed Strangers podcast interview, I seem to recall Tom Jones (ex player, not Welsh vocalist) saying he put in a transfer request in frustration at Lou making him play on through a match despite him saying he was injured.

I have no reason to disbelieve what you're saying as Macari was known as a hard taskmaster. I'm thinking across the board not just at Swindon and a couple of years on I never heard any complaints when Ozzie & Glen Hoddle were in charge which is still more than 30 years ago.

I agree’79/‘80 was one of the most memorable seasons with all those floodlit cup games. Don’t think we best Wednesday that year though. We beat them (when they were near the top of division 1)with a Peter Coyne goal in ‘85.

Yep. Fair point.

You're right Wednesday was in 85 under Macari not Bobby Smith. Great memories tho!

A big problem we have these days is the lack of a properly competitive and testing reserve league. I remember seeing our reserves up against some really strong teams from Arsenal and the like in the Combination League on Tuesday afternoons (confession…I used to skive college) back in the ‘80’s. So line ups like last night, which paying fans are obviously going to resent once the almost inevitable defeat is registered, are one of the few options for ‘blooding’ inexperienced players.

Don’t worry. We are clearly of similar vintage and my memory regularly lets me down too. I rely on this site for hours of nostalgic journeying down STFC rabbit holes!!
http://www.swindon-town-fc.co.uk/

I may have seen you there especially Saturday afternoons sat in the Arkells when Town were playing away. Now we have under 23 matches up and down the country played on a lush green pitch somewhere in the countryside.

That's a great site and often take a look back through the decades. My only disappointment is I've never managed to find footage of Billy Tuckers header away at Arsenal in the 1-1 draw and even asked on the Gunners forum but drew a blank.

I say again. Bristol Rovers were shockingly shit until Christmas. Their movement in the transfer market resulted in them getting promoted.

Now, don't get me wrong, I realise that we have gone down the cheaper option and are trying to develop young players and make money for them. Not the ideal situation, but it is what it is.

I don't think anyone else would take the manager's position. I hope Lindsay succeeds, but I fear it will be a difficult season.

But, I don't see the point in panicking and changing the manager at this stage! If anyone really thinks that's an option now, they need to be introduced to reality!

All fair points. But the message, from Day 1 with Morfuni, was stay up last year, go for it this. As things stand, there is nothing to indicate we are going for it, and that’s where the current sense of worry/ disillusionment/ frustration comes from for me. Nobody thinks it’s easy to run a L2 club, but the board is saying one thing, and doing another, and it’s sad to see. And unlike Rovers, Barton had shown some previous managerial ability, whether you like him or not.

Issue I see with a manager change is who would want to work under the set up with Sandro pulling the strings. That’s the big issue if the manager has to be changed

No, I’ve similarly searched to no avail. That was back in the days where cameras were not ubiquitous at football matches. And I guess few expected anything but a home win that night! A friend of mine skived work with a “cold” to go to Highbury. His lie was difficult to validate the next day….after he’d had his jaw broken by a disgruntled Arsenal fan after the game! Took some explaining as to how he’d sustained the injury whilst recuperating in bed with the sniffles!!

Great game that and remember going back to the coaches which were parked up where the Emirates is now and counting over a 100 lined up with your number on the windscreen so you would find it easily. We had over 8000 there that night😀

Head coaches are more and more popular rather than traditional managers, we're by no means the only club that have gone down that route, as such managers/coaches are also more and more OK with how clubs are operating these days.  The big issue is you're pondering a problem that doesn't really exist to keep your ever negative narrative going.

Grab the snackage and alcohol folks, this could be fun.