YOU don’t have to walk far around the County Ground before you hear someone praising Mark Cooper’s current crop of players.

Often amongst the glowing appraisal there will be a comparison to the Glenn Hoddle side of the early nineties.

While Swindon struggled to cope with life in the Premier League after his departure and they fell down the Football League ladder, Hoddle enjoyed success with Chelsea before landing the top job with England.

However, Hoddle also fell from grace and in 2008 he went about rebuilding his reputation with the Glenn Hoddle Academy, in Spain, by helping ex-pros who had been left by the side of the road by their clubs.

In that time there has not been a managerial vacancy at the County Ground which has not had the former manager’s name linked to it.

And that could have been a reality in 2011 when Swindon were looking for a way out of League Two, he revealed, but instead the club opted for Paolo Di Canio and the rest is history.

“It is nice to hear fans still talking highly of you. It is good to hear that Swindon are playing some good football,” he said.

“At the back end of my academy I nearly went back to the club. We spoke to the owners at the time and the board, just before Paolo Di Canio went in.

“We were going to use my academy as a feeder in and it was a great idea and I think it could have worked fantastically well, but in the end it didn’t happen, they went for Di Canio.

“I would have overseen a lot with my academy and there would have been a big link in with the club.

“It is sad and unlucky that that didn’t happen, it would have been a good thing.

“I would have kept the academy and I would have put a management team in and overseen the club with my academy, overseen the whole shebang.

“We would have worked all together in the right theory of how we were going to play and groomed people like the academy was doing.

“I was very sad actually that it didn’t happen.

“I think it would have been a great way for Swindon to maybe achieve something.”