SWINDON Town’s Under 18s put three goals past out-of-form Plymouth Argyle in their latest Youth Alliance South West contest, a result which kept David Farrell’s side ninth in the division.

Elliot Dugan, Teoman Atik and Toby Holland were on target for Town’s youth side as they recorded their fifth win of the campaign.

The performance pleased boss Farrell, who afterwards said the overall performance of his players took priority over the result itself.

He said: “The result looks after itself, I’m looking at the performance first and foremost.

“It was a much better performance compared to what we’ve had in the last few weeks, we were consistent and created a lot more chances.

“We were fairly tight defensively, and the penalty annoyed me a little bit because we could’ve kept a clean sheet for a change.

“It was a good professional performance.”

Injuries forced Farrell into making multiple team changes ahead of Town’s latest contest.

Changes made indicated to Farrell that he has great strength in depth available at his disposal ahead of this weekend’s home tie against Portsmouth.

Pompey enter the match having secured six points from their last five fixtures.

But a prolific goalscoring record this season will test Town’s youngsters – who Farrell insists have displayed the character traits required on a regular basis to pick up points throughout the season.

He said: “We made a few changes (against Plymouth) and had a look at things, we were missing a few players too through injury.

“The ones that came in took their chance, and deserve to be in the team again this weekend.

“It helps having leaders and characters – you need that at any level.

“I like to think we can have more than one character, and we’ve had games this season where we’ve fielded lots of leaders which can help earn a positive result.

“A lot of the games are winnable, there isn’t a great deal between all the teams in the division – though Oxford are perhaps one of the better teams that we have played.

“Bournemouth and Yeovil are strong, but any team on their day can put in a good performance.

“And we’ve shown that we can match the top teams. But sometimes we do fall short against teams below us – but that’s football.”