The Robins head to the People’s Pension Stadium in search of their first win over Crawley since 2012.
The Town go into Saturday’s game with a rather unwanted record of being winless in the last nine meetings with five draws and four losses.
Swindon and Crawley were promoted to League One together in the 2011/12 season; Crawley grabbing the last automatic promotion place with Paolo Di Canio’s Swindon being promoted as champions. Both meetings ended in a 3-0 victory for the Robins including a Valentine’s Day affair which got the Town fans’ hearts racing with goals from Luke Rooney, Billy Bodin and Paul Benson.
The Oppo
The Red Devils currently sit just inside the bottom half of the table in 13th place, level on points with four other teams. Their current mid table status is summarised well by their stats so far this season: five wins, five draws and five losses as well as 23 goals for and 23 goals against.
Their recent form isn’t the best, picking up just four points from a possible 15 and manager Gabriele Cioffi will be hoping to see a reaction from his players.
Head-to-head
The last affair saw an away win for our hosts on Saturday - a deflected goal by Felipe Morais just before the end of the first half was the difference between the two sides at the County Ground. Swindon came close to equalising in the second half but Keshi Anderson’s penalty was saved by the Reds keeper.
26 Jan 2019 |
L |
0-1 |
|
21 Aug 2018 |
D |
2-2 |
|
02 Apr 2018 |
D |
1-1 |
|
26 Aug 2017 |
L |
0-3 |
|
21 Feb 2015 |
L |
1-2 |
|
16 Aug 2014 |
L |
1-0 |
The Gaffer
Ex-defender, Gabriele Cioffi’s career was based solely in Italy, where he started off with the amateur Tuscan side, Sestese from 1992 to 1996. He went onto play for a series of other Italian sides in the minor leagues of Serie C1 and Serie C2.
In 2005 he joined Montava, where he helped the side win promotion to Serie B and he quickly became a fan favourite. He enjoyed another successful season at Montava which attracted the attention of Serie A side, Torino, where he made his debut in the top league in the 2006-07 season.
After spells at Ascoli and AlbinoLeffe, Cioffi spent two seasons at Carpi where he saw out the rest of his playing career, calling it a day in 2012.
Cioffi made his way into the backroom staff by becoming assistant manager at Carpi before moving into the manager role at Gavorrano. Cioffi then spent time in Abu Dhabi as an assistant manager before being brought over to England by Birmingham to be the assistant manager of Chelsea legend Gianfranco Zola.
Cioffi was there until the tail end of the 2016-17 season, and it wasn’t long before he was in the hot seat, taking charge of Crawley Town in September 2017. Saturday’s fixture will be the Crawley boss’ 65th game in charge.