RAMSBOTTOM United chairman Harry Williams says the club had no option but to part company with player- manager Jon Robinson following a poor run of results and a lack of quality signings.
The Rams are bottom of the Evo-Stik League Premier League, with just two points from their first eleven league games and Williams said they were forced to make a change before it was too late.
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Speaking before last night’s league game at Nantwich Town: Williams said: “I like Jon, he’s a good guy, but we couldn’t go on like that, suffering loss after loss.
“It is a results business, we’ve not won a game and we are also out of the FA Cup.
“People were voting with their feet and the gates are down. We had to do something to try and arrest that decline.”
While assistant boss Phil Edghill and coach Wayne Goodison were due to be in charge of team affairs last night, Williams said the board would meet tomorrow to decide a way forward regarding a permanent appointment.
“We’ve always promoted from within in the past, and I do like continuity,” he said.
“Phil Edghill is another one who knows the club, and he will be given the opportunity to make the job his own.”
Robinson, who scored more than 100 goals for Rammy, was not present for Saturday’s 3-0 home defeat to Darlington due to a long-standing work commitment.
He took the helm in March following the departure of joint bosses Bernard Morley and Anthony Johnson to big spenders Salford City.
And it proved a baptism of fire for the young player boss, who claims he was not given enough support by the Rammy board.
“I felt it was the right way to go because I had no support financially from the club,” he said.
“I was told one thing and then I got another. All I heard was ‘we’ve got to cut this and that.’ “I phoned the chairman after hearing different rumours that he needed to speak to me, and he refused to give me support in my position, so I decided to resign.”
He added: “My budget was cut as soon I got the job, so it was a very difficult to operate under those circumstances.
“Last week I went out to rent a 4G surface for the lads to train on, and it cost £48 to hire.
“I’d got a good discount on it, but the club said it was too much. How can I operate in circumstances like that.”
Williams, though, said that Robinson was afforded the same budget as Morley and Johnson and the chairman added: “We made decent funds available to Jon but he didn’t make the quality signings we needed to add to the squad.
“I gave him as much as the previous managers.”
Williams added: “We are in a difficult situation, but there’s still time to get out of this and keeping us in this league will be the task of the new manager.”
Elsewhere, former Blackburn Rovers defender Darren Peacock and his assistant, ex-England man Trevor Sinclair, have left Lancaster City.
Peacock, who joined Rovers on a free transfer from Newcastle in 1998, had been in charge of the Evo-Stik League Premier Division club since April 2013. Their final game in charge was the 2-0 FA Cup exit at Droylsden last weekend.
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