Football: Foreman Gorman retains trust in his workforce: As the Premiership tyros struggle for air, Swindon's new manager insists on finding room to breathe. Clive White reports

NO ONE needs to tell Swindon about the havoc that football can play with the emotions. How it can lift you up and bring you crashing down again, and then give you a good kicking while you are there.

Three years ago the Wiltshire club underwent the full treatment in the space of a few days with a now-you- see-it-now-you-don't promotion bid. With their place among the elite finally secured, courtesy of another glorious Wembley play-off victory, they have run into more of life's ups and downs. Three straight defeats, culminating in a 5-0 whipping at home to Liverpool last Sunday, seem to have justified their position as relegation favourites, and tonight they go into a match with all the trappings of an end-of-season dog-fight at similarly pointless Southampton.

Anyone who says August is too soon for desperation could not have seen John Gorman, the new Swindon manager, fall face forwards when Oldham scored their injury-time winner at the County Ground last Wednesday, nor seen him squirm throughout Liverpool's slow torture.

Having seen it all before does not make it any easier to endure at the time, but helps later to put it into perspective. When he was a player with Carlisle in the 1970s they lost 6-0 to Luton and yet went on to win promotion. Neither was it the first time a club of his had been on the receiving end of a majestic Liverpool performance, losing 7-0 when at Spurs. He watched that one from the sidelines, too - with relief at being dropped.

'The difference was that Tottenham didn't make any chances. Swindon did. I've never been involved in a game where a team played as well as we did and got beaten by that kind of score,' he said.

Gorman is not about to panic and throw overboard the good habits nurtured by his predecessors, Ossie Ardiles and Glenn Hoddle, in favour of more expedient tactics. But he and his fellow Scot, assistant David Hay, intend to work harder with the players on closing down the opposition. A touch of ruthlessness in their finishing would not go amiss either, but perhaps it was asking a lot of their new Norwegian, Jan Age Fjortoft - and even more of Andy Mutch, their pounds 250,000 signing from Wolves, after just one training session with his team-mates - to impress against Liverpool. Just as it was to ask for maximum effort from semi-match-fit players like Ross McLaren, Micky Hazard and Kevin Horlock.

'I've got to believe that the way we play football will get rewards. We must be doing something right to create about six good goal-scoring chances against Liverpool. Put one or two away and it's a different game.'

Trust a football manager to find sunshine in his darkest hour. But Gorman felt sufficiently encouraged to invite his players to sit through a re-run of the video on Monday. He swore they took heart from it, too. 'I've told them we're on the right lines and to believe in themselves.' Funny how Hoddle is preaching identical sentiments at Chelsea.

Sheffield United's recoveries in their first two years back in the top flight are also a source of cheer to Gorman. 'Then you've got to look at promoted teams who make a great start and then nosedive, like Ipswich did last season.'

That said, any kind of success, short-term or otherwise, would be most welcome right now. 'We just need a break and we'll turn the thing around. One thing's for sure, it's going to be a bigger job to stay up than it was to get us up.'