Swindon Town

MARTIN Ling says that Town need to keep working on the tempo and purpose to their passing game if they are to maintain the consistency of recent performances.

The Town boss started by confirming that Yaser Kasim would miss tomorrow's game at Shrewsbury Town through injury.

"Yaser wont be available for the weekend," he revealed. "His foot has flared up again so he’ll be missing. Nathan (Thompson) has been in-and-around the physio this week and it's nice to see him out there (on the training pitches). He's still a couple of weeks away but he’s moving in the right direction which is good.

"Kev (Stewart) won’t be considered for Saturday but he played 60 minutes on Tuesday against Bristol Rovers. Obviously with the loan situation he’ll make it seven and I can only pick five but you never know what happens over Christmas with games coming at us thick and fast."

The Town boss added that it was important to keep working on the passing philosphy especially with confidence high after the recent run of wins.

"(We) just keep reiterating to the lads what Luke and Ross are putting to them on the training pitch on a daily basis," he said. "That needs to be taken into games. We’re getting little spurts here and there on the ball. Against Chesterfield we had it all the way through but I think the lads know what we’re looking to do it's just about inputting that on the pitch once we cross that white line, then doing that for 90 minutes. Defensively and working hard I've got no complaints it's just about more tempo and purpose to our passing.

"It's three wins on the trot, the lads are full of confidence, training has been good, sharp and bright. I just feel any game in this league you’ve got to take it on its merits and it's about what we do on Saturday. What we’ve done previously counts for nothing now but obviously it's helped us in terms of confidence. We need to be putting our best foot forward to be winning this game of football.

"A lot of teams see us as a passing team which we are and they (Shrewsbury) will try to shackle us and impose on us physically but that's one side of the game I've been pleased with from our lads recently is that we’ve been able to match teams on that side of it and then our football can do the talking. We’ve not been massively fluid in every game - our last game at Chesterfield was probably the most all-round performance. People look at our team and see that we’ve got ball-playing players so teams will try to do that to us and we need to be able to combat that."