SWINDON Town manager David Flitcroft wants to eradicate the mistakes from his side following their 3-2 defeat to West Ham United U21s in the Checkatrade Trophy tonight.

Town fell behind at the County Ground in just the sixth minute when a defensive lapse led to Martin Samuelsen capitalising and despite twice coming from behind - Luke Norris scoring from the penalty spot before Paul Mullin’s header cancelled out Moses Makasi’s strike - Dan Kemp netted the winner with four minutes of normal time remaining.

While the result was not what Flitcroft was after in a competition that he is taking seriously, he was able to find some positives but will focus on the areas that let the team down in preparation for a return to league action against Morecambe on Saturday.

“I was always going to play a strong team in this out of respect for the competition,” he said.

“It was good to get Kaiyne (Woolery) and Noz (Norris) playing up together.

“We got some game time into Donal (McDermott), which I wanted to do.

“I’ve played a team for certain reasons and we’ve got out of that with a view to Saturday’s game but just not got the result that I wanted.

“We concentrated on us and tried to make sure that we were professional in what we did and the goals we conceded were unprofessional, so we’ve got to look at that. It wasn’t for lack of effort and energy and a want to win this football match.

“Ben Purkiss, an absolute pure professional performance from Ben, I thought Noza (Norris) is the player I thought I was going to work with when I first came to the building, I thought his performance was excellent.

“Dion (Conroy), some of his passing, range-finding out to the right was fantastic, (James) Brophy has lit the place up when he’s come on, he really had an energy.

“There are a lot of positives but finding that in a defeat, for me, is very difficult.”

Town failed to name a goalkeeper on the bench as Will Henry started, with Lawrence Vigouroux undergoing a scan on an Achilles injury on Monday night.

While Flitcroft is unsure about the extent of the problem, with McDermott also going off late on with a knee injury, he was pleased to see Conroy come through his return from a shoulder injury and get 80 minutes.

“I think (Vigouroux) went down in about the 80th minute on Saturday and we just feel there’s something in there and some discomfort, so we have got him checked out,” added Flitcroft.

“We’ve had one radiologist read it and we’re getting another one (Wednesday) morning.

“We’re hoping it’s an injury that we can identify and rectify pretty quickly but it’s something I’ll leave to the professionals.”