How pivotal are the next few weeks in Swindon Town's season?

The first thing to point out is that with Ian Holloway now at the helm and looking to turn the fortunes around, it is too early to head to your underground shelter on the Salisbury Plains in a blind panic. Only one of those 15 matches can be attributed to him and, as he would rightly point out, there are still 93 points to play for, eclipsing the 45 which have vanished into the ether already.

Talk of a potential playoff or even promotion challenge remains as farfetched as running into a bird holding a leek. That should definitely be kept on ice until it draws closer to the sphere of reality. Whilst teams have made unlikely runs from the bottom before, the fact you can remember the individual examples exemplifies their rarity. Although I did receive an email from a PR company yesterday saying a supercomputer had Swindon to finish seventh. Maybe it is time to look at open-top bus rentals.

The reality of the situation is this. 12 points from 15 games is the third-worst tally at this stage of a season that this club has had since a fourth division was introduced in 1958 (adjusting for three points for a win).

League table of Swindon's previous slowest starts (Image: Townenders)

In 1993/94 and 2005/06 when Swindon had six and nine points respectively, they ended up being relegated. The team did manage to recover in 1980/81, when they what would now also be 12 points, from losing their first five to finish one point above the drop zone. Swindon have had 13 points at this stage on three occasions, ending in relegation in 1999/2000 and 1973/74 but they stayed up in 1998/99, finishing that season three points clear of the bottom three.

The point of those historical comparisons is not to scaremonger, survival remains more than doable. In the last ten completed seasons, the average number of points that a team has needed to stay up is 43.6, so a miserly 32 points would be needed from the next 31 games to get over that benchmark. In the last five completed seasons, you have only needed more than 44 points once to stay up.

All of these totals are simply to do the bare minimum, Holloway and the players will maintain that they are capable of much more. A problem with goalscoring is something he was able to sort out when he took over at Grimsby Town pretty swiftly as they climbed the table, that Swindon couldn’t score five at Stadium MK should not be taken as an indictment that this is not possible here.

No Town side has ever rallied significantly from where this group presently find themselves when starting like this and so this is categorically a pivotal period in the season. In their next three league games, Swindon will play teams placed 18th, 24th, and then 21st. Win all three and you can start to believe that PR email I got, lose all three and then the morning I spent putting together facts about historical starts becomes increasingly relevant.

Whatever way you are looking at it, this period now is as crucial as the late run to the playoffs under Ben Garner. Despite defeat in his first league game, there have been plenty of positive signs in the three matches under Holloway and how much he can get the players to believe that will be pivotal. Upset as you may be about what got us here, everyone will need to do their bit to prevent this season ending like the others that started this way.