During the 2017/18 season, Swindon were seventh in League Two with 11 games remaining and heavily in the mix for promotion under Flitcroft, who had taken over following relegation the previous season.

Then, Steve Evans resigned as manager of Mansfield Town, who were two places and three points above Swindon in the table.

To everyone’s surprise, they appointed Flitcroft to take over, as he swapped on playoff challenger for another with two months to go in the season.

Futcher explained that the whole thing had happened in the space of about a day for the pair to move up to Nottinghamshire.

He said: “I remember after training one day, Dave just said, ‘Oh, Mansfield have come in for us and made an approach.’

“We were preparing for a game, and then later in that afternoon, it escalated quite quickly, and he went, ‘They've agreed a fee with the club.’

“We started talking about it. They'd agreed for Dave to go; did I want to go? And it was like we came down together, so I ended up going.

“Mansfield hit the figure that must have been Dave's contract, and they agreed to one for myself, so quite quickly it was agreed we could go and talk to them.

“David did the talking with them, and then a day later we were headed to Mansfield.

“I think Mansfield came in, and were probably testing the water, then all of a sudden we were up in Mansfield. That's how quickly it can happen in football.”

In the end, both Swindon and Mansfield missed out on the top seven, but Futcher believes that had they not made the move, Town would have been in the playoffs.

He said: “It did take me by surprise, because I think they lost their manager, he'd left for whatever reason, but I was fully focused on Swindon.

“We'd been looking at the run-in and we certainly believed we were going to get in the play-offs.

“We were a bit of a young, fearless squad with a good mix of experience; we probably could lose a few on the way in, but we definitely felt we had enough wins in us.

“Then, a day later, we were in Mansfield with the same sort of strategy with seven or eight games to go. It was a little bit surprising, but these things happen in football.”