He fired Swindon to Wembley but Swindon’s number 17 has only scored 8 times this season from 30 appearances. But does Alan Connell offer more than goals? By Alex Cooke. Alan Connell is the perfect centre forward. He might not always look like one but if you read through the statistics behind the striker’s performance against Wigan it is hard
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Swindon’s wingers are always cutting in instead of crossing from the by-line, Alex Cooke looks at seven reasons why. ‘Why doesn’t Matt Ritchie go down the line?’ ‘What is Ritchie doing crossing from there?’ ‘Why won’t he pass?’ You can hear the questions in the stands, read them on the forums and scroll quickly past them on Twitter. For a player
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Gradually the mistakes are being erased. First it was Ibrahim Atiku, then Mattia Lanzano was asked to go, now, we wave goodbye to centre back, and disaster central, Alberto Comazzi, writes Alex Cooke. Comazzi wasn’t a bad signing, he was just the wrong signing for this decade, and this country. As Paolo Di Canio admitted the grizzled centre back always looked like
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Paolo Di Canio has changed him from a midfielder to a defender, but playing at the back has allowed McCormack to change the way Swindon play, writes Alex Cooke. It took an injury to get Alan McCormack’s Swindon Town career going: not an injury to him, but to Oliver Risser. For the Namibian had been deployed as an emergency centre
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Three goals, a dugout dust-up and the theatrical villainy of Jason Price: Swindon’s win against Morecambe, with goals from Jake Jervis, Raffa De Vita and Ronan Murray, sounds like excellent entertainment. In reality it was a disjointed and often disappointing game, writes Alex Cooke. Morecambe looked to be a side with a plan: a plan to tap the ball slowly
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He might be a favourite of Paolo Di Canio’s but Oliver Risser hasn’t impressed everyone at the Country Ground. Alex Cooke looks at the statistics behind the midfielder’s contribution. Oliver Risser won just two tackles against Huddersfield over 90 minutes*. In the recent FA Cup tie, the midfielder went into four challenges but only came away with the ball twice.
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With Town on a roll, teams are increasingly coming to the County Ground aiming for a draw. But how can you beat an ultra-defensive side? Alex Cooke looks at Di Canio’s options. Part of the fascination, and some of the frustration, of football lies in that one team can always beat the other regardless of the gap, or gulf, in
Read moreAlex Cooke looks at the brief Town career of Ibrahim Atiku, who might have never played but still got paid. “Now I realise completely that people in this league play the straight ball there and [compete] for second ball”. It is rare for Paolo Di Canio to admit to making a mistake – even when he’s sent a ref tottering
Read moreWith Paolo Di Canio celebrating his first ten league matches with a clean sheet, Alex Cooke kicks off day two of our analysis with a look at how the goals have gone in… Attention all rival managers: Swindon Town’s weakness is in the air. After ten league games and ten league goals conceded, it is pretty easy to spot the
Read moreAlex Cooke looks at the rules on home-grown players and how they are stopping Di Canio picking, playing and signing the footballers he wants. For once the ‘too many foreigners’ brigade are right. Not because their blinkered, dust-brained views on who can and can’t ‘do it’ on a windy night in Barnet are remotely correct, but because the rules say so.
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The Washbag 