HAVING been blown away by Swindon Town on their visit to the County Ground in August, Nathan Byrne would not be surprised if Crewe Alexandra chose to shut up shop at Gresty Road tomorrow.

A Ryan Mason hat-trick was the highlight of Town’s 5-0 romp against the Cheshire guests in the first month of the campaign and Byrne expects the memories of that match to still be lingering on Alex minds when the two teams meet again this weekend.

Byrne, who has been one of Swindon’s most consistent performers during a poor run of form in League One, has stressed how keen he and his teammates are to rediscover the sort of dynamic display that tore Crewe apart earlier this season.

“They’ll know what we can do so they might set up to stop us playing free-flowing football, which more teams have done in the second half of the season. They were a bit naive, maybe, in the first half,” he said.

“We’re still going to try to go there and play our football and get a result. “We want to get back to winning by more than one goal or scraping a win as quickly as possible. Fatigue does come into it but everyone else is tired as well, so we’re just looking forward to the next 13 games and hopefully we can stay around the pack and get back in there.”

Byrne thinks the rest of League One has fully wised up to Town’s passing style of football after the surprise of the opening weeks of the term.

“When teams see clips of us they’re going to know what we’re going to do so they’ll have a gameplan, unlike at the start of the season,” he said.

“MK Dons have been doing it for a few years, trying to play football. If you’re good enough to do it then you’re always going to have a way out of it. We’re just trying to get better and better at doing it and they’ll always be an out-ball.

“When you see teams that want to play football as well it’s just who can play better on the day and that’s what we try to do. It’s harder for us when a team wants to go long and get in our faces so we’re looking forward to the game on Saturday and hopefully we can get three points.”