Forest Green Rovers to experiment without a manager after Robbie Savage's exit

Forest Green Rovers will enter an indefinite period without a head manager following Robbie Savage’s departure, with owner Dale Vince choosing to trial a collective coaching model rather than make an immediate appointment.

Savage left the National League club at the start of October to join Peterborough United in League One, having spent just over a year in charge at the New Lawn in Gloucestershire. In his absence, coaches Josh Bowen, Yan Klukowski and Jonathan Gould have taken shared responsibility for first-team affairs.

“Nobody’s in the frame, nobody’s connected to the job, at the minute there’s no vacancy,” Vince told BBC Radio Gloucestershire. “At the moment, we’re going to try something new, we’re going to see how it goes. We’re not in a hurry, and we aren’t actually having any conversations — we haven’t spoken to anyone about the role.”

The experiment has yet to produce results on the pitch. The trio oversaw a 4-2 defeat to Hartlepool on Saturday, extending Forest Green’s winless run to five matches and leaving the club near the foot of the English fifth tier.

Despite the poor form, Vince remains committed to the approach, pointing to the collective experience within the coaching group. “We’ve got a team of coaches that, between them, have an awful lot of experience — Premier League, Championship. We think between them they’ve probably got it. But also they know the players and the club inside out,” he said.

Bowen is the son of the club’s director of football, while Gould — a former Premier League goalkeeper — is the son of Bobby Gould, who led unfancied Wimbledon to FA Cup glory in 1988.

Vince, a green energy entrepreneur who has chaired Forest Green since 2010, acknowledged the situation was not entirely by design. “With this change imposed upon us, we’re trying to see if we can make something quite good out of it,” he said, adding the club would reassess after “a few games, maybe a month”.