Preston North End v Swindon Town - Post Mortem

Having witnessed their team strive valiantly to reach the League 1 Play Off Final on Sunday 24th May 2015, Swindon Town fans had hoped to be celebrating promotion to the Championship come the final whistle that evening. Failing that, a competitive game with the Town making a good fist of it and losing to the odd goal would have allowed the Swindon fans to return home down the M4 with their heads held high, knowing that their team had given its all in the pursuit of promotion. The result, 4 - 0 to PNE, gave a worthy promotion to the northern club whilst the Robins' abysmal record at the "New" Wembley continued (Played 3 Lost 3) and the club, and fans were left to rue what might have been. Some time has now passed and perhaps, now emotions are not so raw, it is time to open up the League 1 Play Off Final cadaver, poke around the entrails and perform a post mortem on the event that saw the West Country club confined to the third tier of English football for one more season.  

The Tactics

The approach Lee Power, Chairman of Swindon Town FC, and Mark Cooper, the Manager, have towards their brand of football is to get the team playing attractive, entertaining and exciting football. The passing game, moving the ball from the back, through midfield towards the strikers up front has held the interest of all those who have witnessed the team playing this season and, for those of us who can remember (where has the time gone?) the teams of Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle in the early nineties, it has brought back memories of those good times when Swindon Town twice managed to reach the top tier of English football. 

However, the season has been long and what might have been surprising, new and difficult for opponents to contend with in the first few games in which the young team played, with analysis, teams were able to assess the Robins' tactics and adapt their own style of play to nullify Swindon's passing game. Playing with three at the back is a dangerous ploy when the opposition has a fast attack and leaves a team vulnerable to a counterattack, especially if the other team plays with three up front. The goal difference at the end of the season of +19 is decent enough, but the top three teams in League 1 had goal differences of +58 (Bristol City), +57 K Dons) and +39 (Preston North End) - Swindon Town may have scored 79 goals in the league competition, but the team let in 57, a testament to the vulnerability of the attacking football style adopted for the past season.

That being said, the team were full value for the money spent watching them and the view of some

(not mine) that they were relegation-fodder was ill-founded. Top of the league in January 2015, Swindon Town seemed destined for automatic promotion until it became mathematically impossible after the season nose-dived over Easter. However, a play off place was assured and this led Mark Cooper to decide to rest key players over the following weeks. Defeats followed and, to some, the feeling that Town had lost their momentum going into the play offs did not auger well, especially when it became clear that Nigel Clough's Sheffield United would be the opposition in the Play Off Semi Final. The away win was tight at 1 - 2, but the home leg produced a phenomenal 5 - 5 draw after Swindon had been leading 3 - 0 after only 18 minutes. The way Sheffield United was allowed to get back into the game and boss the home side once again highlighted the defensive frailties of the team.

Jermaine Beckford

Meanwhile, Preston North End had seen off Chesterfield with an aggregate score of 4 - 0 having won away 0 - 1 at the Proact Stadium and 3 - 0 at Deepdale. With the euphoria of getting to Wembley blinkering most Swindonians to the attacking prowess of the Final opposition, it shouldn't have passed the Swindon Town management team by that Jermaine Beckford, a loanee from Leicester City, had hit top form for the most important game of the season.

The Play Off Final

The day of the final saw thousands of Swindon Town fans descend on the home of English football, Wembley Stadium, a jewel set in a rancid sea of industrial estates, inadequate road transport links and car parking facilities. Optimism was high, but there was the nagging doubt in many a Moonraker's mind that the "real" Swindon Town would fail to turn up. And so it was to be.
A previous incumbent of the Swindon Town manager's hot seat would have been up 25 hours a day analysing the opposition ensuring that the team he put out would have had the best advantage of defeating them on the big day - Paolo Di Canio may have his faults, but doing his homework is not one of them! However, it would seem that this part of strategising passed Mark Cooper and his team by as Jermaine Beckford was allowed to roam the field and score at will. As for the players, with many of them coming to the end of their loan spell or contract, or having whimsical thoughts of moving on and playing for a "bigger" club, it could be argued that their hearts were not in it; defeat was inevitable before the team had even boarded the coach for London.

2015/16 Season

Mark Cooper

The team that saw so much success in League 1 in 2014/15 is no more. There are some familiar faces, but essentially, the Swindon Town squad of last season has been decimated and a new setup is being formulated as I write. Whether this season's team will be as adept at controlling the ball and finding the net as last year's crop of players remains to be seen. However, from his two seasons in charge of Swindon Town, Mark Cooper must learn to adopt his tactics the better to outwit and outplay the different opposition he is to meet each week. This was the major failure of last season and the biggest learning point for Cooper and the rest of the County Ground team from the debacle witnessed at Wembley on Sunday 24th May 2015.

The Football League Championship on Football Knowledge Website

The 2014 - 2015 Football season kicked off in England with Blackburn Rovers entertaining Cardiff City on Friday 8th August 2014. The score was a 1 - 1 draw with most of the possession going to Blackburn Rovers (65% according to BBC Sport). The first game of the season is always a cagey affair, so it's no surprise when most football matches in the first week of August end up as a draw or a narrow 1 - 0 win.

Nathan Thompson
Swindon Town Player of the Year 2013 & 2014

In League 1, Swindon Town take on Scunthorpe United at the County Ground and Robins fans can only hope for a season similar to the one just gone. Mark Cooper and Lee Power seem to have the know-how to get the best out of younger players and it's heartening to see Nathan Thompson, a product of the club's youth academy and still only 23, being given the Captain's armband for the coming season. With missing out on the play-offs in May a disappointment when, at the start of the 2013 - 2014 season, relegation fears were uppermost in most Swindon Town fans' minds, the story unfolding at the County Ground this coming football year will be equally as interesting as the one told between August 2013 and May 2014.

One thing that has kept my football interest going since the end of last season, the FIFA World Cup notwithstanding, is the ongoing development of my  Football Knowledge website. All the teams for The Premier League and The Football League Championship for this season now have an entry and their histories, notable players and other facts are now just one click of a button away. The idea has always been to give football fans a brief overview of, not only their own team, but the other clubs in the world of football - it is an ongoing project with the whole of the football world to map!

Fulham's Bedford Jezzard

Sheffield Wednesday's Redfern Froggatt

The Football League Championship, for me, is going to be a more fascinating league than the Premier League this season. It is such an eclectic mix of teams whose rich histories and past glories will see ex-European Champions rubbing shoulders with teams who last saw top drawer action in their formative years when the Football League was in its infancy. The names of players such as Fulham's Bedford Jezzard (3rd Top Goalscorer) and Sheffield Wednesday's Fedfern Froggatt (3rd Top Goalscorer) evoke images of Hobbits in Tolkein's Middle earth rather than the rain and mud of a mid-week football match in the depths of  an English winter.

One of the most notable of all the Football League's former players must be Steve Bloomer of Derby County (and Middlesbrough) fame. An England international, he was interned at the Ruhleben civilian detention camp at the onset of the First World War having gone to Germany to coach Britannia Berlin 92. His story is a fascinating one and is probably deserving of more than the traditional song, Steve Bloomer's Watching, played at Derby County. I would encourage all true football fans to research his story.

The next phase in the development of the Football Knowledge website will be League 1 - the chance to discover further stories of the teams that make up the Football League makes the journey a joy rather than a slog.

Mark Cooper's Swindon Town

Mark Cooper
Swindon Town's Manager

After the semi-final play-off defeat to Brentford, despite Aden Flint's superb equaliser (Aden Flint's Superb Equaliser), and with Kevin MacDonald deciding to quit his job as Swindon Town Manager for personal reasons, the whole sorry mess that unravelled at SN1 after Paolo Di Canio's tenure seemed to be coming to its inevitable conclusion. With the hysteria that surrounded the Italian and the refusal on most Swindon Town fans' part to see anything wrong with the management of the club so long as the team were winning on the pitch, and I include myself as one of those swept along by the Di Canio Circus (hindsight - a wonderful commodity with which to analyse past events), there was a sense of incredulity that Swindon Town could find itself in the position of having new owners and a caretaker manager at the helm at the start of the new season. In these rural parts of the country, the West Country instinct (we're Moonrakers after all) to be wary of the strange-sounding outsiders from down the M4 (Londoners) came to the fore when Jed McCrory, armed with the accent and vernacular of a barrow boy, headed up the consortium that saved the foremost team in Wiltshire from sliding into the administration mire that could have had fatal repercussions for professional football in Swindon.

Jed McCrory
Swindon Town Chairman

For his part Jed McCrory has proved his mettle and the improvements around the club, from the bricks and mortar projects in and around the stadium, to the improvements in purchasing online tickets, the matchday hospitality, etc. has shown that the Chairman is holding up his end in the bargain of his ambition for Swindon Town Football Club to be a truly sustainable business and community leader.


When, at the start of the current season, the club was left managerless, the quiet spoken and unassuming Mark Cooper took over the reins. The team that had almost achieved another Wembley visit had been dismantled and a team of youngsters, some homegrown, some borrowed from other clubs, and some signed at short notice were assembled to take on the rest of League 1. For a number of Swindon Town fans, their distrust of Mr. McCrory and the rest of the new board still to the fore, believed that relegation was on the cards and that the only way to avert such a disastrous end to the season was to appoint a "name", someone who had had extensive experience in football management and who could steer the Swindon ship on a course away from the rocks onto which it seemed to be heading. However, after a handful of games under his belt, Mark Cooper was awarded the role of Swindon Town Manager on a permanent basis. I would like to put on record that I supported his appointment. He had worked with Kevin MacDonald for the few months leading up to the end of last season and he knew the players that were left to him for the start of the new season. From these foundations, in my mind, the club was better off with Cooper in charge, as he could gently build on the work that had already been put into moulding a team for the assault on League 1 promotion. One question on the lips of all Swindon Town fans was what sort of football would be played by such young players, many of whom are short in stature?

Bert Head

"Bert's Babes"

Having experienced first hand the football played by the Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle Swindon Town teams of the early 1990's, the passing game that Mark Cooper has instilled into his charges bears comparison to those eras and is a breath of fresh air in a division of the football league that can suffer from the long ball game. However, being a child of the 1960's I missed one of the Swindon Town teams that is legend in this part of the West Country. "Bert's Babes" was a young Swindon Town team managed by Bert Head and included the likes of Rod Thomas, Ernie Hunt, Mike Summerbee, John Trollope and Don Rogers. Bert Head assembled a team of youngsters and drilled them in an almost military style, ensuring that his team was amongst the fittest in the league. (Link to "Six Days to Saturday" - Bert Head & Swindon Town) He achieved the first promotion in Swindon Town's history when the club was promoted to the then Division 2 at the end of the 1962/63 season. The foundations he put in place saw these youngsters go on to win the only domestic trophy Swindon Town has won when the club beat Arsenal 3 - 1 to lift the League Cup in 1969 under the stewardship of Danny Williams.

Yesterday's win versus Notts County (2 - 0) sees Swindon Town in a play-off position after a quarter of the season has passed. Plaudits are starting to come in from around the country regarding the team's style of play and, now that the players have gelled together, promotion this season can now be thought of as a very real possibility. Some of this can be attributed to the steadying hand of Jed McCrory who has put the club back on a stable footing. However, when the dust on this season has settled in May 2014, Mark Cooper can fly away to his summer holiday retreat, satisfied in the knowledge that his first season in the manager's hot seat has been a success, whatever position Swindon Town finish in League 1.  

  

Related articles.

• Football League column - Paolo Di Canio memory banished at Swindon Town

Take a Deep Breath, Pause...and Here We Go Again!

In the UK, we are very good at building someone up only to knock them down again once that person is successful. Over the past few weeks, Paolo Di Canio, has tried Swindon Town fans' patience with his shenanigans and I for one have tried to see the positives and hope that, once the sale of the club had gone through, the feisty Italian would calm down and accept the manager's role that would be offered back to him by the new board. First impressions of Mr. Jed McCrory for me is that he is a genuine football fan who has now achieved his life's ambition of getting himself into a financial position where he can jointly own, and be chairman of, a professional English football club. Add to that, his obvious enthusiasm for wanting to get stuck into his new role and one can imagine that his first priority was to repair the damage and restore normalcy to the operation of the Wiltshire club. However, before there was a chance for the new chairman to offer an olive branch to Di Canio and reinstate him as the team manager, the ex-Swindon leader was on Sky Sports News explaining that his "Swindon chapter was over". Not long after, there are reports in the media that he is considering suing Swindon Town for breach of contract!? Desperately in denial, since Swindon Town was put up for sale, I have been a proponent for getting Paolo Di Canio back as manager. However, with what has been going on and with Paolo Di Canio acting like a spoilt brat, I have to finally give up my support for him.

Kevin MacDonald has been hired as the new manager of Swindon Town and his oppo is to be Mark Cooper, son of the legendary Terry Cooper (Leeds United et al and England). What strikes the observer  immediately about the new regime at SN1 are the smart suits and the obligatory club tie. The intended image is that of a business-like and united front, with one goal of getting Swindon Town to the second tier of the English League, the Championship. Here the club can really consolidate, build a new stadium and develop the income streams that will help Swindon Town sustain itself through the close season and build on the inevitable assault on the Premier League. His first game is going to be the away game at Coventry City on Saturday 2nd March and, hopefully, with 12 games to go, Swindon Town will be celebrating promotion as champions come the 27th April 2013. Swindon Town's history is being added to as this article goes to press and, with that pause for breath, the team can put the last two games behind them and focus on becoming champions of League 1 for the season 2012/2013.

Related articles 

• Paolo Di Canio is interviewed by Sky Sports News next to a picture of Paolo Di Canio
• MacDonald named Swindon manager