What Swindon Town have brought in with Ian Holloway is someone who knows how to win over the fans, will that be enough?

When I woke up on Monday morning in an Istanbul hotel room about to go on a boat trip to Adalar, I did not expect it to end frantically scrambling around writing copy about the man who was in charge of one of the teams that helped to define the Barclays-era of the Premier League.

A week, as ever, is an incredibly long time at Swindon and the twists and turns have brought us to another interesting place. This team is, even if the club may not outwardly admit it, in a mode where they have to defend against the possibility of a relegation battle and to do that they needed everyone on the same side.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of Mark Kennedy’s departure, I said that the next appointment had to be someone with the charisma to win over a group of fans that were at the very least agnostic to the current goings on. There probably is not a figure who could have been considered who has a better track record for exactly that.

I am not sure whether being from the West Country is a major factor, for some people maybe it will be, or even if being from Bristol means that he will definitely be able to understand those from Wiltshire. I grew up in between the two and I don’t necessarily know that. But he, as a person, is dripping with personality and charisma and I believe that the fans need somebody like that if they are to dissociate the regime from the pitch.

Upon the announcement, I was immediately reminded of a TikTok I had seen over the summer from Bunch of Amateurs of a team talk Holloway gave in a charity match. He is impossible not to relate to and be inspired by in the way that he talks. Even on EFL on Quest with Colin Murray, he was just very watchable. That part was important and I am excited to watch how that relationship goes.

The other side of this is that it is difficult to ignore that he has not had a job anywhere since December 2020. Part of that is by choice but even before then his roles were becoming less prestigious. Is that because he is not viewed as someone who can do what he once did? I can’t really talk about that because it is not my job to pick managers – probably for good reason.

Certainly, Holloway has been a spectacularly successful manager, accomplishing exceptional things, but football is inherently a ‘What have you done for me lately?’ environment and that is what will be needed. His charm will buy him some time with the fans but the results do need to improve and there needs to be signs of life in this team pretty quickly.

I expect him to bring excitement with his football more so than we have seen from previous managers, bums off of feet stuff, even if it seems unlikely to go too far away from the front-footed approach that the club have preached about.

Coincidentally this afternoon I was listening to a podcast and Nedum Onuoha brought him up as somebody he remembered being especially tactically astute. You don’t turn Charlie Adam into a Liverpool player if you aren’t, I suppose. If he can bring some of that magic to Wiltshire then that is the dream, if he can bring more of a smile to the fans then that is a win.