HEAD coach Luke Williams believes that Swindon Town must not let the disappointment of their defeat to Chesterfield last weekend trick them into believing that their goose is cooked.

Williams’ troops were unable to do their chances of escaping the relegation zone any favours as Reece Mitchell’s injury-time goal condemned them to a 1-0 loss to the Spireites.

Town travel to Port Vale for another crucial clash with struggling rivals on Saturday – the Staffordshire side are a point behind Swindon but have three matches in hand – and boss Williams is hoping that his troops can take heart from the chances they created against defensively-minded opposition.

“I am happy because the opposition have got everybody in front of the goal. It’s different to playing the last three games (against Gillingham, Coventry City and Oldham Athletic) where the other team tried to attack more,” said the Swindon chief.

“They set up brilliantly. The manager (Gary Caldwell) is excellent. I knew that before the kick-off, so I knew it was going to be very difficult. Then, the team are all banked up, the fans are wanting us to go and smash the ball into the block of players.

“I understand the frustrations but it’s just ridiculous, so we need to try to position ourselves where we can get close enough to the goal, where we can make a cross or a pass more accurate, not just to lump into the block, and we did that.

“The best you can do is create something, and we did that; plenty of somethings, plenty of half-chances, plenty of sights of goal to try to score”

Williams, whose team had recorded back-to-back victories for the first time this season before the Chesterfield clash, added: “We need to take something from the performance.

“I know many, many people will say we didn’t perform well. We played a game to win, we created chances against a team that were very organised and banked up, and defending deep.

“We created chances and tried to limit the opposition to as few as possible, I think we did that, so we need to take some confidence from the performance.

“Thirty seconds – not even that – 10 more seconds and it’s 0-0 and we say: ‘OK, four games we didn’t lose and we barely concede a goal’.

“We are talking about 10 seconds of football and one action, so we need to try to take some confidence from that.”