Take this with a pinch of salt, because it's being reported by the terminally inaccurate TeamTalk, but former Wimbledon striker Dean Holdsworth is being linked with a move to the County Ground. "Deano" is on a free after being released by Bolton, and could undoubtedly do a job for Town in the second division - if he's willing to take a pay cut of £9,000 a week. There's only one, faintly wistful-sounding, quote from Andy King on the subject - who knows, he could have been saying only moments later "... and Ronaldo would be nice too".
But - hey - it's the summer silly season, and we all need something to cling to as we contemplate the season ticket bill for next season.

It's an unwelcome return to this page for a group we all love to hate, Swindon's bungling council leaders. These, lest we forget, are the people desperate to see Swindon become a city yet who are responsible for delivering some of the worst public services in the country. Education was found to be a shambles last year, and only today their social work provision was ranked as low as it could possibly go.
So it's surprising to see that they've managed to spare some time to sabre-rattle at Swindon Town, and moan about the CVA agreement that - wait a minute - they agreed to last week. It seems that officials attending the creditors' meeting agreed to a last minute alteration, made on the insistence of the Inland Revenue, which put the council among the ranks of ordinary creditors - rather than preferred ones, who get all the money they're owed. The Council will now only get a proportion of the money it is owed.
The councillors, showing they posses at least one part of the vital armoury of any politician, are managing to twist things around: they suggest Swindon Town's financial difficulties are having a direct impact on the provision of vital services like schools and social care. But, as the Adver rightly points out today, Wiltshire County Council has similar funding problems to Swindon - and managed an above average rating in the social work rankings.
Objecting to the CVA, someone should tell the councillors, would have made things much worse: the club would have folded, ending any chance they had of getting a penny out the club - and leaving them with the thorny issue of a 15,000-seater stadium in the centre of Town.
Maybe they know this already. Maybe they don't - and, given their inept management of other council affairs, my money's on the latter. But, as "Sigs" so rightly points out on the Rivals board, they're "pissing in the wind" either way.
Pissing in the wind is a dangerous occupation when you're an elected official, as you've generally got voters standing nearby. Should any councillor be happening by this page on their expensive new council tax-funded laptop, they'd do well to click on that link and see the long line of people agreeing - and a few suggesting, not for the first time, that it's time the Trust got political.

Swindon Town's administrators sent out a press release to all the national newspapers this afternoon... they're sounding pretty confident ahead of today's creditors' meeting...

SWINDON TOWN FC POISED FOR RECOVERY DESPITE COLLAPSE OF ITV DIGITAL

The collapse of ITV Digital, which has sent shockwaves through the football world, will not adversely influence the proposed recovery plans of Swindon Town FC, according to the Club's Joint Administrators, Andrew Andronikou and Ladislav Hornan of national accountancy group Hacker Young.  
Proposals for a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) will be presented to a creditor's meeting today (Friday 24th May 2002).  If the majority of creditors accept the proposals, the club will be in a position to exit the Administration procedure in time to make preparations for the ensuing 2002/03 season.
The Administrators have implemented a strict cost rationalisation programme and, given the club's current financial structure, are confident that it should trade profitably, irrespective of the outcome of the ITV Digital crisis.
Current indications are that the creditors will unanimously accept the proposals, which require that the Company Voluntary Arrangement will run for five years and three months. The Club has undertaken to pay all football creditors and Crown debts, estimated to be £1.1 million in value, in full.
'Unconnected' unsecured creditors will receive a dividend of approximately 24 pence in the pound.
The 'connected' creditors, who include Sir Seton Wills and Willie Carson, are owed £3.4 million but have waived their entitlement to participate in the dividend distribution.
"We have taken this additional income shortfall into account and we have still been able to arrive at a workable solution going forward," says Andronikou.  
"My personal view is that the expected outcome for Swindon Town will be of considerable interest to the football community at large, with a rumoured thirty clubs facing severe difficulties in the wake of the ITV Digital debacle.
"I think this will encourage worried Boards and their supporters at threatened clubs around the country to look more closely at their options. It may well be that their position is not as bleak as they first imagined.
"We can predict neither the result of the legal battle surrounding the ITV Digital failure nor how long the action will take to
resolve, so that source of revenue has to be disregarded.  
"Put simply, clubs must make plans to move ahead on the assumption that the expected ITV Digital funds will not be forthcoming."

Bradford City today made 19 players redundant to cut costs - including getting rid of £40,000-a-week Benito Carbone. The club is in administration, and by getting rid of every established first-team player at the club they hope to save a pretty staggering £20,000 a day in costs this summer.
Needless to say, the PFA is utterly furious and claims today that the move puts the "whole game in jeopardy". But if any other failing business can get rid of its top-paid staff - especially when they are underperforming as Bradford's players appear to have been all last season - why not football clubs? They've filled their boots when times were good, and now times are bad they may just have to get used to sharing in that as well. Some would argue the closure of entire football clubs because of the huge demands of players is far more likely to put the "whole game in jeopardy"...

The new season ticket discounts were announced today, after the deadline for the original 15% discount expired. The new deal: 10% off all season tickets bought before Saturday 8 June. In addition to that discount, the club has also heeded the complaints from fans who had tickets in the wing areas which, until now, were heavily discounted over central stand tickets. Wing ticket renewals (note - not new tickets) get £30 off, then the 10% discount being offered other fans. That prices a full season ticket on the wings at £342 - obviously a lot better than the full £410, but a lot worse than the £199 some fans paid last year.

Oh - Barclaycard (yup, the Premiership's sponsors) have realised what a terrible mess they've created, and are backing down live on Five Live. Oldham are back on normal terms, only an hour and half after the story broke, but Barclaycard are "entering talks" with clubs because of the precarious financial position of many of them.
I really which I had the ability to post audio clips here - it's really funny listening to some Barclaycard PR guy backing down as fast as his sugary words can let him...

Here's another huge blow for lower division clubs: credit card companies are clamping down on football clubs. BBC Five Live is reporting this lunchtime that a credit card issuer has told Oldham Athletic that it is concerned the football club will go under, and so will only hand over cash for season tickets purchased by credit card on a match by match basis. That's a huge problem - most clubs use the money from season tickets to keep going over the summer, and set things up for the following season.
Of course, Oldham's problems could be made worse by this defensive move. The credit card company is, presumably, doing this because it would have to refund fans the cost of their tickets if the club went under during, or before, the season.
And the fear is: if they're doing that to Oldham, how long before they do it to Swindon Town?

Raith Rovers say they're playing Town on 13 July, although there's no confirmation from the County Ground yet. Rovers are perhaps best known for beating Celtic in the 1994-95 League Cup and getting into Europe - where, in the UEFA Cup third round, they went in at half time 1-0 up against the mighty Bayern Munich at the Olympic Stadium. They subsequently lost 2-1, 4-1 on aggregate, but that was the closest any team went to beating the German side in the competition that year.
Rovers, alas, are not hitting such heady heights these days - they finished bottom of the Scottish first division this month. They might have been in Europe just seven years ago, but we'd still be looking to beat them pre-season if - as expected - we play them.

Close season and all's quiet... although the speculation surrounding the new structure of Swindon Town continues. Andyrats posts his take of it all on MOS. As he says, it looks like we'll be seeing a lot more of Dunwoody Sports Marketing, who look set to take over much of the day-to-day running of the club, and who will have an option to buy the rest as well.

Here's a crying shame: South Korean restaurant owners have scrapped plans to offer football fans attending the world cup free samples... local favourites that would have been on offer include dog meat burgers, as well as soup and sandwiches made of pooches. It would have been interesting to see how many fans, a lager or two too many and suffering from the munchies, took up the free offers without realising what was going on...

David Duke has agreed to a new one-year deal, according to today's Adver. I don't know if Dukey is a Guardian reader (or, for that matter, a visitor here) but he's spot on when he says it would be a brave man to turn down a deal this summer. He denies the likely departure of Sol Davies has influenced his thinking, but you'd imagine it must have been a factor, too.

A survey in today's Guardian has found up to 600 pro footballers in the lower English leagues and in Scotland will go on the dole this summer. Clubs in both countries (outside the English Premiership) are slashing player budgets after the collapse of TV deals. There are case studies of players being released - including current Wales international left back Darren Barnard who has been let go by Barnsley (take note, Sol Davies).
There's also a full list of players facing the chop, which makes sad reading - there are a lot of big names, and promising youngsters, in among this lot, and while clubs (hopefully, including Swindon) will snap many of them up for free, many will be lost to the professional game.

Now there's some good news for next season... we've another derby match, after today's victory for Cheltenham in the play-off final against Rushden and Diamonds.

Bad news for next season - although for once it has nothing to do with Swindon Town. Cardiff City and their violent "supporters" will be back at the County Ground next season after their team failed to beat Stoke City in the play-off semi finals. Cardiff fans marked the end of their season with - you've guessed - more violence.

It looks like Sol Davis is going to leave the County Ground after turning down the offer of a new, improved contract. As Andy King says in the Adver story, Davis must have supreme confidence in his ability, and in other teams having already spotted him: he's still injured with a groin problem, and may not even be fit for the start of next season. And, as I've noted before, there are going to be a lot of players out of work this summer - players with plenty more experience than Sol...

Last week's concessions on the season ticket front won a few people round, but not all. I'm left with pretty mixed feelings about the price rise, and our reaction to them. It's a real dilemma.
Dave Hanley over on Myonlyswindon.com joins a couple of other high-profile fans in announcing he's not going to renew his season ticket. "If I do buy a season ticket then it will not be until the day before the season starts," he writes, "and by then I may have decided that my young son deserves to watch Premiership football after I've made him suffer the trash that we've been subjected to for the past few seasons."
Which is fair enough, if you consider that football is just a product, that we're just consumers, and that we can simply go off an take our pick of which footballing product we pin our colours to. Of course, you could argue this attitude has been part of the problem: if there was still the tradition of supporting your local club, whatever that might be, as there was when the Football League was first created, then clubs like Swindon would be doing much better than they are now. Instead, the club struggles along on crowds much smaller than the size of the town should support, and the town centre is full of Chelsea, Tottenham and Man U tops every weekend.
But the point is: we're not just consumers, and football is not another entertainment product. That's an argument against the kind of price rises we've just suffered - it's not fair for boards to abuse loyalty by jacking the prices up by 100% (although some have made the point that the prices, post discount, maybe aren't that bad).
But there's another side to the coin: I can also understand if the board is slightly bemused by the fans' reaction over the last two weeks. We must seem much more worked up about the price rise than the problems of earlier this season when it looked likely the club would go under. This summer, you could say we're being asked to cut the crap, bluster and songs, and simply show our loyalty to the club by stumping up. What happens if the choice really does turn out to between having a more expensive local football club, or having no club at all?