Greer captained Town until the League One playoff final in 2010, but after being sent off in the semi-final against Charlton Atheltic and missing the final, the Scottish defender was sold to Brighton for £250,000.
Fitton said losing his influence was a major factor in Swindon’s relegation to League Two the following season and the decision to sell was one of his big regrets.
He said: “My biggest mistake was selling Gordon Greer, I know, I will.
“I really liked Gordon, Nick (Watkins) was the only person who came out and said he shouldn’t sell him, and I think that’s because he had seen him at the club, the influence he had and the way he saw him.” . he interacted with the rest of the team.
“He was a very honest guy and even apologized to me after the Fulham cup game when Bobby Zamora converted him, one of his problems was that he wasn’t very good at turning and a good coach would probably have taught him how to play a bit.” differently.
“A little story, at lunch, he never sat at the same table two days in a row, he always made sure he was with one group one day and another group the other day so that cliques were never allowed to develop.
“Part of it has to do with team dynamics and that’s ultimately where Danny (Wilson) failed, he let the locker room get away from him and that was unfortunate and may have been because we brought in the wrong combination of players, I think it was like that.” almost certainly he was.
“I didn’t know until much later that Gordon was effectively managing that team.
“One day I went to Danny with two graphs, these are the early days of the statistics we have now, and I said, ‘I have two graphs here, I’m very happy with one of them and very unhappy with the other. ‘
“One was the league standings for bookings and we were first and I said ‘we should be proud of that’ and the other was for the goals conceded in the last ten minutes and we were first.
“This was the season we got to the playoff final and after that I don’t think we conceded a goal in the last ten minutes and at the end of the season I said to Peter Shirtliff ‘What happened to those two rosters?’ ‘
“Peter said ‘Danny gave them to Gordon,’ and he said the president gave them to him, so do something about it, and he did something about it.”
Fitton added that, along with Greer, Billy Paynter had been a big presence in the locker room of the team that had reached the playoff finals but had left that summer.
He said: “He was running that dressing room, along with Billy Paynter, who should never have played in the final because he was already on his way and he had told Danny so.
“He was another one who was very effective in that dressing room, a loudmouth Scouser who didn’t allow any nonsense from anyone else and you need those people in a dressing room.
“If someone came in and got mad at one of the other players, Billy was always the first one to say, ‘Hey, until you’ve played a decent game, don’t criticize anyone else.’
“When people talk about having a couple of veteran pros in the locker room, it’s a requirement.”
.jpg?w=1200&resize=1200,0&ssl=1)