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Departed manager Scott Lindsey hopes he’s laid the foundation for Chatham Town to start moving up the leagues.
Covid-19 has meant his past two seasons as manager with the Chats went unrewarded. The club were top of the Southern Counties East Premier Division when last season was scrapped, having scored 60 goals in their 11 league games, and they were in the promotion hunt the year before that.
Lindsey got his team playing the way he wanted and it was working, but the lure of a challenge in the Football League proved too great. It was a tough decision to leave but he couldn’t turn it down.
He’s now working as a joint assistant to Swindon head coach Ben Garner as the Wiltshire side look to bounce back from a turbulent few years with a new owner at the helm.
Lindsey said. “It broke my heart to leave. It was a tough decision but was one I couldn’t turn down because of the career move and the finances.
“Chatham is a club I will hold dearly to my heart forever, I will always look out for their results. I have already been looking at the fixtures and wondering when I can get a game in to watch.
“I enjoyed my time there, everything was positive all the time, the chairman is always striving to push forward and to improve all the time and I am very much like that, so that suited me.
“The players were outstanding to work with, they did exactly what I wanted them to do, I couldn’t have asked for any more.
“They were fantastic and I will really miss the place but I couldn’t turn down the opportunity of working in the Football League again.
“My dad once told me, ‘always work, or play, or coach at the highest level you possibly can’. He installed those values in me from an early age. Shoot for the stars and work at the highest level you can.
“Had a club come knocking for me in the league above Chatham, would I have gone? No. Would I have gone two or three leagues above? No. It had to be a Football League club for me to be interested.
"It is a proper football club with great facilities and a great chairman"
“I had a really good time there, the facilities from when I first arrived to when I left were on a different level completely.
“It is a proper football club with great facilities and a great chairman, with a real passion to drive the club forward, great staff, great players, great supporters.
“It is all geared up to go and win the league and I really hope they do. I hope and pray they get up to where they deserve to be, I would love to see them win promotion and love to see them win promotion again, I think the chairman alone deserves that.
“In my time there I learned a hell of a lot, working with Carl Laraman (the director of football now in caretaker charge), it was good for me, for my development as a coach, I learned loads from him and I enjoyed it there.”
Lindsey put his own stamp on the way the team played, keen to implement a possession-based style which he has long admired. It’s the kind of football that also persuaded him that League 2 Swindon was the right move.
He said: “It is what I believe in, I hear a lot of people say you can’t play it at that standard.
“I think you can, you just have to have a bit more trust in players. You are only asking them to pass the ball which they should be able to do anyway. If you position them right they should be able to do it.
“I know Swindon Town is a club that has a real focus on the way I like the game to be played. Throughout the years we have had the likes of Glenn Hoddle there and even the team that was playing when I was there previously (in 2014) was a possession-based team. It is a football club that has always had that label so it was an attractive move for me.”
Chatham chairman Kevin Hake was quick to praise Lindsey for his efforts after leaving while captain Jack Evans also spoke about how he enjoyed the football.
Lindsey said: “Jack enjoyed his time with me being his manager because I gave him the opportunity to have the ball more, I think that goes with all the players. In a possession based team they are going to get more touches of the ball and when you have that you enjoy it more.
“I was proud of what we built, albeit we didn’t win anything, we didn’t get chance with Covid but I am proud with the way the team played and that is an achievement in itself, to take a Kent League team and get them to play the way I believe in, to do it properly and with a real professionalism. In my opinion that was an achievement in itself.
“The players know what they are doing because they have been coached. They just need a bit of guidance on a Saturday which I know Carl will give them. I really hope they do fantastically well.”
