Swindon Town

MARTIN Ling has challenged his team to put in a performance away from home when they take on Chesterfield at the weekend.

The Town boss has tasted defeat in the two away games he has taken charge of to date – results that have been contrasted by two wins at the County Ground – and wants his team to build on Tuesday’s last-gasp victory over Walsall.

“I was very pleased with victory (against Walsall),” he said. “I think we’ve talked enough about the negatives – it was not the greatest performance in the world but against a team that have been outstanding and had not lost at home anywhere this season, it turned out to be a good result. The only thing people notice is the result. They won’t look at the performance. We want that (the performance) to be better but that will come as the building blocks of getting points on the board starts to happen.

“If you look at it: three league games, six points – it’s good even though you had the Fleetwood result and the FA Cup game. For me, it’s a question of going away from home and putting a performance together.

"We’ve had two wins at home – they’ve not been scintillating either of them - but we just need to put an away performance in because the Fleetwood one was disappointing and so was Rochdale so we need to be putting together something better when we’re on our travels.”

With stand-in skipper, Rapha Rossi-Branco set to miss out on Saturday due to suspension, Ling provided an update on the squad of players he will have at his disposal against the Spireites.

“We’ve got to shuffle the pack,” he said. “It’s a ‘chicken and egg’ scenario really because we want to put the work in but we’ve only got four fit defenders. You’ve got to be careful but we have certainly put work in on a game-plan on how to beat Chesterfield. It’s all been talked about and set up by myself, Luke (Williams) and Ross (Embleton) and they’re going to go out and put it into action.”

On the injury situation he added: “Louis Thompson is fine. Drissa (Traore) will probably train today so will come into contention for Saturday. Then we’ve got the ones we talked about before - Jordan Williams will be more long-term and Kevin Stewart is still injured but we hear he’s on his way back in terms of fitness.”