Johnson backs MacDonald appointment (From Swindon Advertiser)

SWINDON TOWN: Johnson backs MacDonald appointment

8:00am Tuesday 19th March 2013 in Sport By Sam Morshead

YEOVIL manager Gary Johnson thinks the appointment of his old friend Kevin MacDonald as Swindon Town boss was a shrewd move by the new County Ground board.

The pair went through the UEFA Pro Licence course at the same time and know each other well, and Johnson gave MacDonald a ringing endorsement ahead of tonight’s meeting of sixth and fifth in League One at Huish Park.

After 21 months of pure theatre with Paolo Di Canio at the helm, the arrival of MacDonald was greeted by some with tones of disappointment. However, Johnson is confident he has all the attributes necessary to succeed.

“I know Kevin well. I did my Pro Licence coaching course with him. He’s a good lad and he’s very competitive so I am sure sometimes his persona is not what the lads will see,” he said.

“It was a very clever appointment in my opinion. They have gone against that Paolo Di Canio in-your-face manager and gone for Kevin, they have gone for a change.

“Once the game starts then the other dugout doesn’t affect you. You have got to affect your team, it only affects you when they start throwing water over you or throwing abuse.”

Johnson added that the Glovers would have to be better than Swindon across the board to give them the best chance of victory.

“Every game is a difficult game because the level is so close but the three points are now big, there’s no doubt about that and the more we can do the better,” he said. “If we can get our lads more ready than they are getting their lads ready and our crowd is bigger than their crowd, like our dad is bigger than their dad, then we can get a fantastic victory.

“It is always better having a week between games if you have won your last game, but we drew with Crawley when we thought we should have won.

“What it does allow you to do is get your organisation right and we had to make sure that if they trained once on Monday we trained twice and if they took Wednesday off, we didn’t.

“It was important that all our efforts were going into this game. We look organised, we look strong, we have certainly got competition for places so training has been lively.”