Former Swindon Town Chairman Andrew Fitton said that he believed his biggest mistake during his time was selling Gordon Greer to Brighton.

Greer captained Town to the League One playoff final in 2010 but after being sent off in the semi-final against Charlton Atheltic and missing the final, the Scottish defender was sold to Brighton for a reported £250,000.

Fitton said that losing his influence was a big factor in Swindon’s relegation to League Two in the following season and the decision to sell him was one of his big regrets.

He said: “My greatest mistake was to sell Gordon Greer, I know that, I will put my hand up to that.

“I liked Gordon a lot, Nick [Watkins] was the one person who came out and said I shouldn’t sell him, and I think that is because he had seen him around the club, the influence that he had, and the way he interacted with the rest of the squad.

“He was a very honest guy and he even apologised to me after the Fulham cup game when Bobby Zamora turned him, one of his problems was he wasn’t very good at turning and a good coach probably would have taught him to play a little differently.

“A little tale, at lunch, he never sat at the same table two days running, he always made sure that he was with one group one day and another group another day so there were never any cliques that were allowed to develop.

“Part of it is about squad dynamics and that is ultimately where Danny [Wilson] failed, he let the dressing room get away from him and that was unfortunate and it may have been because we brought in the wrong mix of players, I think it almost certainly was.

“I didn’t know this until a long time afterwards, Gordon was effectively managing that team.

“I went to Danny one day with two charts, this is the early days of the stats we have now, I said to him ‘I have two charts here, I am really pleased about one of them and really unhappy about the other one.’

“One was the league table for bookings and we were top and I said ‘We should be proud of that’ and the other was for goals conceded in the last ten minutes and we were top.

“This was the season we got to the playoff final and after that I don’t think we conceded a goal in the last ten minutes and at the end of the season I said to Peter Shirtliff ‘Whatever happened to those two charts?’

“Peter said ‘Danny gave them to Gordon’ and said the chairman had given them to him so do something about it, and he did something about it.”

Fitton added that along with Greer, Billy Paynter had been a huge presence in the dressing room of the side that had made the playoff final but had left that summer.

He said: “He was managing that dressing room, along with Billy Paynter, who should never have played in the final as he was already on his way and I had told Danny that.

“He was another one who was very effective in that dressing room, a mouthy Scouser who didn’t allow any nonsense from anybody else and you need those people in a dressing room.

“If anybody came in and got on at one of the other players, Billy was always the first to say ‘Hey, until you have played a decent game, you don’t criticise anybody else.’

“When people talk about having a couple of senior pros in the dressing room, it is a requirement.”