Dino Maamria’s sacking at League Two Stevenage brings to an end a rollercoaster 18-month reign in the manager’s chair.

The Tunisian was a strong favourite for the job following the sacking of Darren Sarll in March 2018, having being a popular face at the Lamex during his playing days.

And the former Nuneaton boss picked up his first win at the third time of asking, a 4-1 success at home to Barnet.

Ironically Alex Revell, who will assist caretaker manager Mark Sampson in the short term at least, scored twice that day.

They only lost one of the remaining five games that season and finished the year in 16th place.

A steady start to the 2018-2019 campaign had Boro flirting with the play-offs and they were in fifth after 12 games.

But they struggled to put a sequence of results together through the middle part of the year and had slipped to 12th before an undefeated run of five wins and a draw in the last six games gave them an outside chance of making the play-offs again.

That run though had elevated the hopes of many that this year could see Stevenage in contention for promotion once more.

Maamria brought in a number of new faces, both on and off the pitch, but defeats in their opening two games, away to Salford City and at home to Exeter City, as well as no goals in their opening five games left them at the wrong end of the table.

They have scored in their last two outings, a 2-2 draw at home to Macclesfield Town and Saturday's 4-2 reverse at Cheltenham Town, but both games saw late goals deny them something more than the one point they gained.

Despite all that Maamria was still speaking positively after the defeat at Whaddon Road.

He said: "We've got to work very hard on the training ground. The players know that and their reaction in the second half shows they know that.

"We came up short defensively today but a couple of weeks ago we were saying we were good defensively and not scoring enough. Now it's the other way round so we need to work on both sides."

The club have said they will release no further statements before the usual pre-match press conference ahead of Saturday's home game with Carlisle United.