The Fat Lady’s Tuning Up…..

After a horrific season so far at Swindon Town, the fat lady looks as if she is tuning up getting ready to official welcome Swindon Town to…..League Two.

After Swindon’s 1-0 loss at Colchester this afternoon, Town have 8 games to get to safety with 5 of those at home. Swindon play top of the league teams, Brentford, Swansea and Huddersfield in those 8. Swindon despseratly need to start winning otherwise it’ll be exciting destinations like Bury and Rochdale next season.

If Swindon do get relegated this season it will mark the first time a ex-premiership club has gone from top to bottom in the english game. MK Dons (Wimbledon) may also join town in this cruel twist of fate.

Prior to the season Swindon lost star striker Sam Parkin to Ipswich. Most fans expected the departure of Parkin, and then manager Andy King looked to have offset the loss of Parkin with the signing of renowned strikers, Tony Thorpe and Jamie Cureton.

Fans were excited at the prospect of promotion to the Championship or atleast the playoffs. The loss of Sam Parkin didn’t seem too bad anymore. Town then went to sign Gareth Whalley, Ricky Shakes, Charlie Comyn-Platt, Nicky Nicolau and Jack Smith to round things off in a busy summer for Town. The team looked as if it would be in contention on paper but things soon went horrifically wrong.

Cureton and Thorpe looked absolutly uselss at the start of the season and both looked very lazy and out of shape. Thorpe then looked to make amends scoring his one and only goal Oldham Athletic and scored 4 for the reserves earlier in the season. Thorpe re-appeared against MK Dons in a 3-1 loss, again he looked lazy. It was only a matter of time before Thorpe was gone. However when Rory Fallon got suspended and Town has no strikers, Swindon were forced to start Thorpe in the FA Cup match against Boston United, to which he responded to this promotion by…. well doing nothing. Thorpe was soon released and signed by Colchester United.

Cureton was suffering much the same fate at Thorpe. The fickle Swindon crowd was on his back as he basically stood around staring amelessly at the sky as the ball rolled passed him. Finally he was shipped off to Colchester United and something strange started to happen. The Jamie Cureton of old rememberd how to score a goal and went on to score 7 on his loan spell and looked set to sign with the U’s. Manager Phil Parkinson put in a bid for Cureton but with Swindon not scoring and bottom of the league new manager Iffy Onuora decided to bring back Cureton, must to the strikers dissapointment it would later be revealed. Fans demanded Curo came back and start scoring goals for ‘his’ team and he has since done so.

Nicky Nicolau was meant to replace Sammy Igoe who decided to be greedy and take a contract with Millwall. As irony would have it. Sammy Igoe would eventually find himself stuck in the reserves before moving to Bristol Rovers on loan. Nicolau never even got out of the starting blocks. He suffered a hernia operation and was soon replaced by Ricky Shakes and Aaron Brown. Nicolau was then sent on loan to conference side Hereford United and has hinted his future may lie away from the County Ground.

On the management side, Swindon lost 10 games on the trot and it wasn’t until a 0-0 draw at Brentford the wounds soon healed and the club finally remembered how to ‘not lose’. The draws came in the handfuls however this was not enough for Swindon who were still bottom of the table. They could draw but whenever under pressure panicked and lobbed the ball forward. Manager Andy King who had always had a love-hate relationship with the Swindon fans was finally sacked after 50 or so supporters stood outside to protest. King had been used to the ‘King Out’ chants for many years after ripping into supporters calling them idiots and being aggressive to fans who questioned his idiotic subsitutions and tactics.

Fast forward to today…After all the drama this season on and off the pitch including the ill fated Sky TV Documentary, it seems only fitting that Swindon Town should once again be relegated to the bottom of english football. A place Swindon fans have not seen since 1986/87. With 8 games to go this season unless Swindon can find a way to start winning and being consistant, it will be run down sheds and stands instead of grand stadiums like Swansea and Nottingham Forest, something most Swindon fans would never have imagined at the beginning of the season. To make things worse it was only 2 seasons ago Swindon Town made the playoffs and almost got back to the Championship.

Football is a cruel game.