Team News
Mark Phillips: Suspended for Tuesday evening
Southend duo Mark Phillips and Michael Timlin will miss the home fixture.
Centre-back Phillips and midfielder Timlin both picked up their fifth bookings of the season in Saturday's 1-1 FA Cup draw against Oldham and now serve one-match suspensions.
Timlin, however, would have been ineligible in any case under the terms of his loan from the Robins which runs until January.
Winger Jemal Johnson remains suspended by the Essex boys pending an internal investigation into his off-field behaviour, while striker Barry Corr and midfielder Harry Crawford (both knee) are long-term absentees.
Should Southend see off Paolo Di Canio's side at Roots Hall then they will set a new 18-match unbeaten club record, and also move to within touching distance of a trip to Wembley with only a two-legged area final against either Barnet or Brentford standing in their way.
Timmo's warning to Di Canio: www.southendunited-mad.co.uk
He has his critics: www.facebook.com
Go on, goggle his name, there's some horror stories about this one!
His assistants are Lee Betts and Elliott Kaye; The fourth official is Ian Cooper.
FIXTURES
The Swindon Town team for the 1909–10 season
Swindon Town Football Club was founded by Reverend William Pitt of Liddington in 1879. The team turned professional in 1894 and joined the Southern League which was founded in the same year.
The club's home ground is the County Ground, which has an all-seated capacity of 15,728.
Since turning professional in 1894, the club has enjoyed periods of proud success, most notably, during the period 1968-1970 when they won the 1969 League Cup (defeating Arsenal at Wembley Stadium) securing promotion to the Second Division.
League Cup success earned the club its first invitations to European competitions, but they were not eligible to participate because they played in the then Third Division.
So as compensation they were entered into the 1969 Anglo-Italian League Cup and the 1970 Anglo-Italian Cup, with Swindon winning both.
These wins were led by the club's talismanic winger Don Rogers. He has had the South Stand named after him from the 2007/08 season.
Swindon Town won promotion to the Premier League during the 1992-93 season, the only time the club has played in the top level of English football.
The Robins was the second team to win promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs, beating Leicester City in a cracker 4-3, with Glenn Hoddle as manager.
The 2009–10 season started positively with the club maintaining a play-off position going into the new year with the team at one point in second place with automatic promotion in their own hands.
However, a slight slip in form towards the end of the season seen Swindon finish 5th but still ended the season with a semi-final play-off place against Charlton Athletic. Swindon won the tie on penalties and went on to play in the Football League One play-offs final against Millwall at Wembley for a place in the Football League Championship.
Sadly for the Robins, they lost 1–0 in what was their first defeat in 4 appearances at Wembley. After losing the final Swindon lost their top scorer and former Shrimper Billy Paynter who joined Leeds United on a free transfer.
During the close season of 2010 many Bookmakers had Swindon as one of the favourites for promotion to the npower Championship. But after an unconsistent season, in which Danny Wilson resigned, on 25 April 2011 Swindon were relegated to League 2 after losing 3–1 to Sheffield Wednesday FC. It was seen that losing Paynter without a replacement was the main cause.
Swindon were midway in the season looking to push for a top six place, after a 4–2 win against Charlton Athletic, but did not follow this up and continued to struggle for the rest of the season.
Paul Hart was sacked, replaced for the last two games of the season by former player and current reserve and youth team coach Paul Bodin.
In the summer of 2011 the club took a gamble and secured the services of the charamatic Italian striker and former Hamster Paolo Di Canio as team boss, whether it will pay off or not, and after a 12-match unbeaten run that's taken them into the play-off positions the signs are good, we will find out in May.
(For a more comprehensive look at the club: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swindon_Town_F.C.)
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