Inheriting an ‘impossible’ job, Swindon Town’s only Premier League boss tells MICHAEL REEVES he was determined to bow out in a blaze of glory

To be at the pinnacle, test yourself against the best to see just how good you really are.

But there are also times when you know that the odds are stacked against you and to stay at the level you have reached you are going to need more than an act of God to survive.

After the euphoria of winning promotion to the Premier League in May 1993, the Swindon side that entered the multi-millionaires top-table had lost several key components.

Player-manager Glenn Hoddle had been snapped up by Chelsea and skipper Colin Calderwood, the rock of Town’s defence, had been tempted away by Tottenham.

The man left to pick up the pieces, John Gorman, could have easily walked away with Hoddle. In fact he very nearly did.

But he stayed, re-gathered the troops and set about conquering Swindon’s Everest – the Premier League.

It was always going to be a struggle. Whoever wins promotion to the crazy world of the Premier League through the second tier play-offs are favourites to return to where they have come from in double-quick time.

They are written off before a ball is kicked. The mind is focused on not being embarrassed and just enjoying the ride.

But Gorman was different. He knew he was facing one of the biggest challenges of his footballing career, but he wanted to go out fighting, go out playing the way that would win the club fans and entertain those that came to watch.

“When Glenn left, I could have walked out the door. I was actually leaving with him but the chairman, Ray Hardman, said ‘look John we want you to stay on as manager’,” Gorman recalled.

“I never felt right about leaving Swindon after getting them promoted.

“There were a lot of players out of contract, I remember saying to Glenn ‘whoever the new manager is they are going to be right in it’, or words to that effect. It turned out to be me.

Gorman taking training during his County Ground tenure

“We had a lot of players out of contract, players like (current Town boss) Martin Ling, Dave Mitchell left us to go to Turkey, Colin Calderwood - he was our captain - went to Spurs and Glenn was a top player.

“But we managed to keep John Moncur, Micky (Hazard), Martin Ling - we gave him a new contract. There was a whole bunch of them.

“That was the hardest thing (building a side for the Premier League).

“You have the excitement of getting there, you see teams now with all the money, but the only money we had I went out and bought Jan-Aage Fjortoft with. David Hay came in as my assistant and Andy Rowland came later.

“We went and got Fjortoft, he was £500,000. Well, that is laughable now.

“Okay I get remembered as the manager of the team who let in 100 goals and that does bug me. If you look at our goals scored, we scored many more goals than most teams do when they go down.

“Even though the inevitable was that we were going to go down, we just set out to have a real go.

“The first win was ridiculous, we had to wait for about 15 games, but we beat QPR and big Keith Scott scored.

“It was hard. Look at Jose Mourinho, he’s been having a hard time. I would have liked to have seen Mourinho or Alex Ferguson be manager of Swindon that year in the Premier League, with the money that we had to spend and the players that we were up against week in, week out, it was difficult to stay up.

“But we gave it our best shot. I bet when the fans look back now, they look back with a lot of pleasure at some of the games, with how we played and the performances.

“It does bug me because I tend to get remembered as the manager that took them down, rather than the coach that was there and instrumental in taking them up.

“When we played Man City in the Premier League, that just summed up our luck.

“We were winning 1-0. Then Fjortoft scored a brilliant headed goal and for some reason, after the goalkeeper had smashed the ball up the field accepting that it was a goal, the linesman put his flag up and overruled the goal. We would have been 2-0 up.

“Harry (Dave) Bassett then phoned me up and said, 'I’m sorry but you are going down, nobody can be that unlucky'.

“To play like we did that day and lose was very hard, but was what it was like. It was a hard, hard league.”

Gorman pictured while managing a team in a charity match at the County Ground against a Lou Macari XI in 2007, wearing Martin Ling's Leyton Orient jacket.

Gorman first came to Swindon with Hoddle back in 1991 after the departure of Ossie Ardiles to Newcastle United.

The County Ground side were struggling at the wrong end of Division Two and the club went calling on the former England star to take up his first role in management.

But Hoddle knew that he needed an experienced man behind him. Someone who he could trust, a friend.

Gorman and Hoddle’s friendship blossomed when the Scot arrived at White Hart Lane in 1976 from Carlisle United, having begun his career at Celtic.

Hoddle and the now-66-year-old had the same footballing philosophy, they wanted to play attractive football.

With Hoddle going on to become one of the country’s finest midfielders, Gorman’s career took him to the States before returning to take up coaching jobs at Gillingham and then Leyton Orient.

“I was coaching at Leyton Orient and went to Monaco and stayed with Glenn for a number of days with my wife (Myra) and two children (Amanda and Nick),” Gorman said.

“He spoke at me at length one night about how he would love to get into coaching.

“Then Glenn came to me one day and said that he wanted me to come with him - he had been offered the job at Swindon as manager.

“He wanted somebody with experience like me, someone that he trusted, and that is how it started.

“We went to Swindon without realising that we were about fourth bottom in the league.

“Glenn didn’t do a lot of coaching at the beginning - he grew into it.”

Taking in a game against Oldham in 2008

The arrival at Swindon had been at a time when the club was recovering from the scandal that prevented them from taking their place in the top flight and court cases that left some members of the board at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Having navigated the team to safety, Hoddle and Gorman set about making another assault on getting to the Promised Land.

Swindon went close in the 1991-92 campaign before their day to remember at Wembley 12 months later.

“It was a great season, the style of football that we played, everyone was impressed because we had so many gifted players in the team,” said Gorman, who would later become Hoddle’s assistant at England.

“We had players like Paul Bodin, David Kerslake, who then went away and Nicky Summerbee took over from him at right-back, Colin Calderwood and Shaun Taylor at centre back.

“Fraser Digby and Nicky Hammond in goal, in midfield we had Ross MacLaren, who also played at the back, was unbelievable, Glenn was in that role too.

“It was a lovely way of playing, we had Micky Hazard, John Moncur, and Martin Ling - a real talented player who made great runs into the penalty box. If he didn’t score he was always a threat.

“Then up front we had Craig Maskell, Dave Mitchell and Steve White. We had to keep changing them around, you could never say who was the best as they all had something different.”

Having been revered and then sacked, Gorman was not out of football for long, in fact he had a job offer waiting for him once he had returned from a holiday to Tenerife to escape the glare following his Swindon exit in November 1994.

And while knowing that taking an assistant manager’s post at Bristol City would leave a sour taste in the mouths of some Town fans, it kept him in football and eventually led to a reunion with Hoddle at England.

In the County Ground directors' box with Joe Jordan for Town's game against MK Dons earlier this year

“This (England) was the biggest opportunity of my career, but it was a difficult decision because being Scottish, it wasn’t easy, but Glenn said that he needed me,” he said, “The great thing was that he never forgot what I was like as a coach, the way we got on, my feelings for the game, he knew that I was good with the players.

“It was hard, though, because the press in Scotland and Scottish people in general didn’t particularly like me, they went off me.

“But it was a career thing, to get an opportunity to coach at that level and take them to the World Cup.

“I think and still believe, and I have seen it again and again, if Sol Campbell’s goal (against Argentina in the second round) stood, England could have won the World Cup (in France in 1998).

“I might not have been loved in Scotland, but that would have been a great achievement.

“The team was good enough, the players at that time were amazing, it was a great squad.”