PAOLO Di Canio has personally contacted each of the three players he failed to sign for Swindon Town on deadline day to apologise for the state of affairs at the County Ground.

The Robins manager agreed terms with Cheltenham midfielder Marlon Pack and Charlton pair Danny Green and Bradley Wright-Phillips last Thursday and the trio were all poised to move to the County Ground until the end of the season, but the Football League refused to sanction the transfers.

The takeover is expected to be finalised later this week and the three could now join Town in the emergency loan window, which opens on February 7. However, the deals are not guaranteed, with Birmingham and MK Dons understood to be interested in Green and the availability of Wright-Phillips now made known to other Championship and League One clubs.

With Swindon existing in a state of flux, Di Canio phoned each of his potential new signings to say sorry for the confusion of the past week.

“I phoned them and I left a message to them. I said to them I am very sorry. I had to apologise and say once again it’s not my fault - it’s from the other people’s action,” he said.

“I don’t want to say that you lose your image because it wasn’t my fault, but we are top professionals - me and Phil Spencer - we can’t lose our reputations. It was nearly the third time this year so I apologised, I said thank for nearly coming in here and the fact that they came in here just because I persuaded them shows you just who is the club at this moment.

“They came in here just for Paolo Di Canio. It took two minutes to convince them. They travelled straight away to come in here and in a few hours everything was burned. I called them back, I said sorry and told them the reasons.”

Meanwhile, Di Canio has said he is no longer interested in keeping Chris Martin at the County Ground until the end of the season. Martin’s loan spell expired on Saturday.

When asked if he wanted to resign the forward, the Town manager said: “Absolutely not. He took one month to get him fit and see him as an athlete as he was in the past. “Even if I had an intention to keep him, in the last few days before the transfer window finished he said to me he had a chance or he still has a chance to move to a different club - maybe the Championship.

“How and why do I persuade a player who was telling me before he desperately wanted to stay and then in the last few days maybe received the news from his agent that he has the chance to go somewhere else?”