Ian Burchnall: Forest Green Rovers part company with head coach
- Published
Ian Burchnall twice took Notts County to the National League play-offs before moving to Forest Green
Forest Green Rovers have parted company with head coach Ian Burchnall, with the club bottom of League One.
Ex-Notts County boss Burchnall was appointed in May, after the departure of Rob Edwards to Watford and Forest Green's promotion to League One.
However, they have won just five of their 28 league matches this season and are four points from safety.
"The challenge was greater than I could have thought coming in," Burchnall said in a statement.
"For the fans, I am sorry that I couldn't make it work and that they didn't see the best of my team. I hope for them the team turns it around. They deserve a team in League One."
Under former boss Edwards, the Gloucestershire club won the League Two title and were promoted to the third tier for the first time in their history.
But they are now without a win in their last eight matches in all competitions, with Burchnall's departure coming after their 1-0 defeat at 10-man Bolton on Tuesday.
Forest Green have the worst goal difference in League One and have played more games than all of their relegation rivals.
"I like to give people the chance especially when it doesn't look like they've got the tools to do the job. That's certainly how it looked for Ian," chairman Dale Vince told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
"We didn't recruit well in the summer then we had a string of injuries and so we've started to try and put that right in the January window - recruited five or six players already, probably do a couple more before it's over.
"But we've played three games with a bunch of new players and got one point."
Vince said he had "no more time left to give" Burchnall but did point to issues within the club itself which did not help, including the departure of director of football Richard Hughes who left for rivals Portsmouth in September.
"It's not just about the points it's the way we've been playing," Vince said.
"You have to watch the whole game of football to get a sense of what's going right and what's going wrong and I just think there was a very challenging ask for Ian to come up from National League to League One and in his first season we didn't do all that we could have done to help him."
Forest Green aim to appoint a new head coach within the next couple of days and Vince said he was confident the club could secure their league survival.
"We will be looking for some experience right now because of where we're at, instead of having the luxury of saying well let's think about the future, let's look for someone young and up and coming and data focussed and al that stuff, which is what we did last time with Ian and the time before that with Rob Edwards," he added.
'A weaker team than last season'
Analysis - BBC Radio Gloucestershire's Paul Furley
Ian Burchnall leaves Forest Green with just five wins in 28 league games and no win since 10 December.
Dale Vince is usually a patient and loyal chairman, and as recently as the end of December was saying Burchnall needed to be given resources and time after a summer which saw key players Ebou Adams, Kane Wilson and Nicky Cadden depart, plus Matty Stevens and Jamille Matt struggling for fitness - their absence meant the team was weaker than last season's.
Vince has been consistent on that now, saying the root of the club's current plight lie in events of last summer.
There have been signings aplenty in the January transfer window, but those will take time to bed in - time a new manager will not have in a maximum of 18 games, inheriting a squad of someone else's players.
What ultimately may have cost Burchnall his job is that against a Bolton team, reduced to 10 men for more than an hour of Tuesday's game, Forest Green were unable to find a way through.
For all their possession, Rovers failed to produce the chances needed to score, which was not a good omen for the rest of the season playing against 11.