Swindon Town

A disappointed Mark Cooper spoke to the media after Town’s 4-1 defeat at Barnsley.

On the defeat…
It was a good start for us. We started pretty brightly and got given a goal then we defended terribly. I just said to the players: there’s two sides to the game and we’ve got to be better at the ugly side. We’ve got to do the ugly stuff to make sure we win games of football. We created loads of chances but it doesn’t matter if we defend like that.

On defending…
Straight from the kick-off they nearly scored then 30 seconds later the ball is in the back of the net. We didn’t take enough responsibility today without the ball. They need to get to grips with that - with us trying to put a stronger squad together there’s competition for places. You can’t expect to play only when you have the ball. A lot of it comes from big punts down the pitch. Someone has to put their head on the ball. We try and do everything but you’ve got to want to do the other side of the game.

On Nathan Thompson’s absence…
He trained fine yesterday but woke up stiff so we decided against it.

On new arrivals Henrik Ojamaa and Louis Thompson…
He (Ojamaa) is direct, he goes for goal and got in on numerous occasions and created a couple of chances. It’s no secret that Louis wanted to come back - there were one or two other options for him so we did all we could to make it happen and the chairman got it done. He will be better for the game. You could tell he hadn’t played a lot.