Issue 25 September 1997

80P

THE SWINDON TOWN FANZINE

New STAR SIGNS for Town

(Three for the price of One?)

THE 6ger

26 Bydemill Gardens, Highworth, SWINDON, SN6 7BS Editors: Craig Jack, Anna Merriman

Mark Merriman, Alex Cooke, Andy Williams.Don Pablo Benito, Mark Fry, Robert Foster, Richard Banyard

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Edt

It's been a long time coming, this first 6ger of the season: we know it. There are the usual reasons: work commitments, lack of contributions and a spillover from the 'couldn't-be-botheredness' of the end of last season. Some of these were ongoing problems anyway, but which have now become exacerbated and will mean this season that there are fewer issues than before - down to two or three. But that's dependent on contributions - if we get enough to make more issues, then we'll do them. The 6ger won't cease to be altogether, though that's mainly down to the fact that if it did we'd be fanzine-Iess and that's one of the reasons why we started in the first place. We want to retain some quality and if that means putting more effort into the few issues which we do produce, that's how it's going to be. What you don't want is a fanzine which gets chucked out any old

how and just appears because it should. To not just carry on but also also grow and improve, The 6ger needs fresh ideas and life breathed into it. Offers of help are welcome. Contact Anna if you're interested in more than just submitting an article.

Thanks of course to all those who have contributed to this issue. Your efforts are always very much appreciated.

About the football then. You'll notice a poem/song on the back page. Firstly it's in here because it's funny and secondly because we stand by all the things which were written (and almost written) here about McMahon at the end of last season. Almost written? After the game at Oxford last season (we lost 2-0, remember?), we had a fairly heated discussion about putting out a special edition, or at Jeast a 'McMahon must go' flier. Why didn't we? The short answer

.'

Macca Confirms that he's still the Boss

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is that after so many defeats and so many abysmal, effortless performances - like the players, we just couldn't be bothered. So the main reason for keeping the poem in its original form is that it's an accurate representation of our feelings at the end of last season. Since, then and throughout the close season, stories from inside the club have served to reinforce those feelings, though the results so far have shown a marked improvement on our expections.

But, we will be consistent. A good showing this season may demonstrate that Macca is, after all, capable of getting the best out of a reasonable set of players, but that doesn't compensate for his lack of ability in man-management. Barring any sudden change in temperament, it will always be a feature of his management style and will cause recurring problems. It's whether or not the team can perform well enough for most of us to forget those bumps under the carpet and for how long. Hang on, we're repeating ourselves again, so enough already said.

Enough said, but while we're on the case, let's ask how manager-player relationships can deteriorate so badly, as the one between Peter Thorne and McMahon? Yes, Thorne takes some of the blame and if he's a professional, it shouldn't have affected his performances or motivation on the pitch, though it very palpably did. You can lay the blame at the feet of one p'layer, but two, three, four .... ? Now Phil' King has been told he can leave if the right offer comes in for him - stories of another dust-up between a player and McMahon, how predictable. Maybe it had something to do with him pursuing all the other players round Ireland trying to shave their hair off.

On the other hand, good old Shaun Taylor obviously put a good word in for

Macca, otherwise brother Craig would never have signed.

Anyway, those were the reasons for the poem staying as It is. To be fair to the author, he wasn't that happy about it going in now after the decent start to the season we've made, but there are a few features of our play which are already recognisable from last year that justify the selection. (Perhaps we should get Macca to justify some of his in the same way.)

Aft.er the good results of the preseason tour (more about that later in this issue). the start to the season has been reasonable; better certainly than we could have expected at the 6ger. But we've played a lot of poor sides so far and you're not going to see Reading, Stoke or Huddersfield chasing promotion at the end of t,he season. The real test was Forest. A side tough enough to stay in the Premiership for several seasons, and still showing that strength. We stood up well to the test and maybe we've got some idea now what sort of season we're going to have.

Team selection, then. Again, some of it has been forced on McMahon through injuries (Drysdale, Seagraves, Robinson and most recently Leitch). But what about the Huddersfield and Watford(Coca Cola) home games. Did they remind you of anything? Did they remind you of how in the Second Division Championship winning season, we just couldn't break sides down at home? And why, with forward playmakers like Walters, Cuervo and Gooden can't we? Because it's the wrong team or because the tactics are wrong? At home to Huddersfield in the second half, McMahon should have been able to notice and quickly act upon two blatantly obvious features of the game: ~) we weren't getting past their defence and needed some fresh I'egs to change

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the pattern of a very stagnant game and 2) Darren Bullock seemed to have lost his memory and forgotten that he was a footballer, or maybe it was just that he had forgotten he was playing for Swindon.

That can be the only explanation for Bullock's second half display, when he wandered round the pitch pretty much ignoring the ball, leaving Leitch to run his legs off and hardly offering a challenge worthy of the mention, if it wasn't of the studs-up type. Yet McMahon persisted with him and the rest of the starting eleven until five minutes from time. He couldn't surely have been arguing that he thought we would break through when it was obvious that we wouldn't. Everyone knows that McMahon is not the only manager to leave substitutions till the dying minutes of a game. We've scoured the coaching manuals for an explanation, but haven't been able to find a plausible one yet.

In Bullock's case, there's more to his relationship with the supporters being bad just because he hasn't been performing. He's been on a downward slope ever since his antics at Huddersfield(coincidence of opposition?) at the end of last season, when he somehow thought it fitting to run round the pitch after the game wearing a Huddersfield shirt. Those of us who were there won't forget that in a hurry. And for those of you who weren't: it's not something blown up out of all proportion.

We should have learned the lesson of Peter Thorne: taken the money from the club offering- (in this case, Stockport for Bullock) and let them clean up the mess. OK, so it wasn't quite as simple as that. The deal fell through because Bullock couldn't agree personal terms, but what future can Bullock have at Swindon, when we are prepared to let him talk terms to another club? Since he joined

us, the only games where he has showed signs of being worth the money paid for him, was in his debut against Birmingham and more recently against Forest. Otherwise, he has simply been a waste of space. We can't afford to sign a player for £400,000 if he's only going to perform once every dozen games.

At the beginning of July it looked as if we'd be starting 1997-1998 with the same sorry set of players who gave us such a depressing end to last season. The bottom line was that once more there was no money tor signings. With McMahon publicly criticising players like Thorne and King (GWR Radio May phone-in) and not able to get shot of either, it didn't augure well for good team spirit this time round. There were a couple of signings (McDonald, free and Craig Taylor from Dorchester) and quite a few 'almosts', but just before the season began, two other new faces (Hay and Cuervo) arrived and made a real difference.

The departure of Thorne for a laughable fee to Stoke meant that despite having Finney and Cowe waiting in the wings, we were still lacking in fire power - a real, true goal-scorer up front. Allison could be relied upon to equal his tally of last year, but an important contribution to avoiding the relegation dogfight this year was always going to be an out-and-out goalscorer. On the first couple of showings, Chris Hay looked as if he could be the one. Since then, it's been more difficult to say. Comparisons are already being made between him and Duncan Shearer: Shearer always looked uninterested and still managed an average of nearly a goal every other game during his time with us. If Hay plays poorly, but still scores, he'll do. Of the three league goals he's scored so far this campaign, two have come partly

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because he has been in the right place at the right time. And this, when he has been carrying an injury and obviously lacking match fitness. Is that still the problem, now? You have to be prepared to wait and see what he can do when he's not suffering from either of those problems. We already have a sneaking suspicion that he's just the sort of player who looks permanently knackered whether injured or fit.

The second impressive signing of the close season is Philippe Cuervo who grew up with St Etienne and moved briefly to Sochaux before coming here. But don't worry if his new haircut makes him look like Carlton Palmer, he's got a lot more skill and a more pace. He's the sort of player who may not be in the game for the whole 90 minutes, but contributes far more during those moments of brilliance than some other mediocre players may do in a whole game. His control is excellent as is his ability to take on and beat players and shake off tackles. McMahon's task is to find out quickly the best position for his strengths and that ain't right 'wing-back'. If our Philippe could just put in the right final ball more often and sharpen up his shooting - . . . but then he probably wouldn't be playing for us.

The two most recent (loan) additions to the squad are Brian Borrows from Coventry (he has to be about as old as my Dad) and Chris Caspar from Manchester United, who played against us last year in the Coca Cola Cup. Again, McMahon's hand was forced by defensive injuries, and the latest (to Seagraves) limited his options. So it's not just a case of a complex about shoring up the squad with enough defenders to cover all sorts of positions twice over and not just the left-back position.

We've gained an Irishman, a Scotsman

and a Frenchman, we've lost an, er, English Irishman to Cardiff - £75,000 and Thorne to Stoke. You have to wonder if we would have commanded this Iowa fee for O'Sullivan and the one for Thorne if the country wasn't so populated by foreign players. But that's a whole new debate.

What formation exactly are we playing this season? There was a brief flirtation with 4-4-2 against Watford at home, mostly because of the absence of Robinson and Drysdale, but other than that we have stuck to 5-3-2.

Strange. Up and down the country, teams are turning away from wing-backs and the 'five at the back' formation in favour of the old flat back four. Look at Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal. Flat back four never meant that the full backs didn't get forward anyway. In our case, it needs of looking at - in the long term a flat back four might allow the likes of Gooden to get further forward more often.

Of the old members of the squad, Digby continues to perform consistently well and the injury to Robinson came at a bad time when he seemed to be enjoying in his newly-acquired sweeper position. So he was never worth what we paid Newcastle for him, but he's turned out to be one of the most reliable players we've got on the books. And then there's this new bloke at left-back. Masquerading under the guise of Jason Drysdale, this bloke can cross the ball and tackle a bit, too. Concern mounts for the mysterious disappearance of our Jase, the jug-eared bloke who was always out of position and gave the ball away every time he got it.

During the close season a number of other things changed: First off, Mike Spearman was replaced by Riki Hunt as Chairman. Now we all like and