RUGBY Town have appointed Ian King as the club’s new manager following the departure of former boss Carl Adams.
The 49-year-old, born in Rugby, previously managed Barwell, Coalville Town and Stratford Town in the Southern League Premier Central.
King guided Barwell to an eighth-place finish in 2023 before taking the reigns at Coalville earlier this year only for the latter side to drop out of the league.
Rugby parted ways with former boss Adams by ‘mutual consent’ following a 4-0 defeat at Boldmere St Michaels last weekend with the club three points from safety in the Northern Premier League Midlands relegation zone.
King said: “I know it’s absolutely going to be a big challenge, but I can’t wait to get started on it.
“The run of results recently has clearly been poor and that is bound to have had an effect on the players’ confidence, so it’s up to us to rebuild that as quickly as we can and make ourselves more difficult to beat and hopefully develop things on from there.
“It’s not going to happen overnight, but we believe that we can turn things round and move back up the table.”
Town director, Neil Melvin added: “We are delighted to welcome Ian to the club.
“He has built up many years of coaching and managerial experience and has done extremely well in recent seasons at a higher level.
“He knows the club well already and we’re hoping he can hit the ground running but the primary objective for everyone is to lift ourselves out of the relegation zone as quickly as possible.”
The new Valley boss also had a spell in charge of Daventry Town in 2017/18 along with coaching roles at Leamington, Bromsgrove Sporting and Worcester City.
King emerged onto the non-league scene as an 18-year-old midfielder at Butlin Road more than 30 years ago as his 21 league goals inspired Valley to promotion from the Southern League Midland Division.
He made 51 appearances for Rugby scoring 26 goals across three spells for the club including two further short stints in 2002 and 2004.
A former Aston Villa trainee in his playing days, King signed for Stoke City following his first spell with Rugby.
He also feature for a host of non-league clubs including Rushden and Diamonds, Nuneaton Borough, Telford United, Aylesbury United, Stevenage Borough and Kettering Town before spending time in Australia.
King added: “I have always had a strong affiliation to this club and the area, and I still live locally.
“I used to watch the team as a kid and I enjoyed my time playing here as an 18 year-old and again later in my career.
“Everyone in the squad will get the opportunity to show us what they are capable of and what they are about.
“We’ve got three games in close succession now, so that should show us whether we need to make any changes to the squad in the New Year, but hopefully the lads we have here now will buy into what we are trying to achieve and we can start to make the progress we need to stay in this league.
“From what I’ve been told and seen of the games played so far, the priority is to bring some more structure and organisation into the team, and that’s what we will be working on in training.”
Former Coventry City full back Brian Borrows joins King as assistant manager. The pair worked together at both Barwell and Coalville.
King will take charge of training this week with his first game in charge of the club against Darlaston Town this weekend.
Rugby travel to Darlaston on Saturday, December 21 with kick-off at 3pm at the Paycare Stadium.
Are you on Facebook?
Like or follow our Facebook page –
facebook.com/Rugby.Observer
to get daily news updates straight to your news feed.
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source link
