There's little doubt that the appointment of Martin Allen as the new Cheltenham manager will bring some life into the club. Whether he can save them from relegation remains to be seen, but ever the optimist, he was even talking about the play-offs at his introductory press conference earlier today.
"This is a special day for me to be appointed manager of this football club. I've been out of work now for a year and three weeks, four days and two hours. It's been a long hard year, took me a good few months to come to terms with leaving Leicester City and I'm delighted when I took the phone call from the chairman to come down and have a chat. It's an exciting time for me to get back in the cut-throat business but it's a little bit sad for Keith Downing and I am sad for him," said Allen who had his dog Monty with him..
"The team is bottom of the league and has conceded 18 goals and I'm sure there's a lack of confidence and everyone has extremely low expectations. Some people think the certainty is now for relegation with a low playing budget so that's part of the challenge.
"With regards to all the staff, they'll all be staying in place for the time being. I'll see if I can work with them of course and see what qualities and abilities they've got and the same with all the players. I'll be reviewing everybody over the next couple of weeks to see how we get on right across the board; but of course, with a team that's bottom there are going to have to be some changes because I'm really not prepared just to sit back and suffer. I like to be happy and win football matches so its going to be a tough call and probably going to go right down to the very end of the season as to whether we get into the play-offs or not!!"
Allen knows Whaddon Road well. His father, Denis Allen, was Cheltenham manager between 1974 and 1979, when the Robins were playing Southern League football.
He becomes the sixth man to manage the Robins in the nine years since they joined the Football League. In order Steve Cotterill, Graham Allner, Bobby Gould, John Ward, and Keith Downing were the previous managers.
Text at top (next game etc)
Next Game: Rushall At Home In The League On Saturday 30th November At 3.00pm