Swindon Town

Swindon Town F.C. are delighted to announce the appointment of Luke Williams as the club’s full-time Head Coach. Luke has signed a five-year contract, keeping him at the club until 2021.

Chairman, Lee Power has released the following statement:

I am really pleased that Luke is going to be our club’s Head Coach on a full-time basis. He has signed a five year, fixed-term contract which I fully expect him to see out and be at the club for many years to come. Luke is an integral part of our project at Swindon Town. He is a fantastic coach - the best I've come across in 25 years of football. He has had to do it the hard way and has certainly served his apprenticeship. He finished as a player very early on due to injury and has put his whole life into coaching and improving players. He's been an Under-14s coach, a youth team manager, an Under-21s manager and an assistant manager and is now ready to be a Head Coach. He buys fully into the club’s model and is the ideal man to lead the club forward.

The reason we have taken a bit of time over the appointment is that we both wanted to make sure that he was ready and comfortable to take on the other parts of the job that he hasn't had to do up to this point - mainly picking the side and dealing with the press. If either of these jobs had detracted from the quality of his coaching, we would have looked at going down a different route but he has taken to the role in his usual calm, controlled manner and been totally unfazed.

The reason Luke is ‘Head Coach’ and not ‘manager’ is because that is what he is: the Head Coach. No players will come into the club that Luke is not happy with but his main job is to coach the group and improve them. I don't want him not taking training on a certain day because he has to go and watch a Premier League Under-21s game, for example. I have Seamus Brady and a couple of trusted contacts that will help me recruit players for the club and Luke will always be part of that process. We will only bring those players in if Luke wants them. We have actually had the most ridiculous conversations over the last couple of months where I have wanted to bring bodies in because I was concerned about the position we were in and Luke was saying he doesn't need any. Normally, the Head Coach says he needs them and the chairman says “no, you've got enough.”

He has such faith in this young group and even the really young ones like Jordan Young and Ellis Iandolo, he sees as players that are very much part of the first team squad. We are extremely confident that with the nucleus of this squad and with three or four additions (which should be done as soon as the window opens) we have got a realistic chance of challenging next season. Even if we don't manage to get into the Play-Offs this season, with us now finally having our own training facility - which we should be in by the end of the year and is something that has always been imperative for the long-term success of the project - we feel we are very much on track. We feel very excited that we can achieve our goal of having a sustainable, debt-free football club in the Championship. Thank you for your continued support. Please keep getting behind Luke and the boys and let's have a strong end to the season.