Phil Brown pulled no punches in his disappointment at his team’s performance as they succumbed to a 2-0 defeat away to Exeter.
Brown’s side left St. James’ Park empty-handed after goals from Jonathan Forte and Jayden Stockley extended the Grecians’ unbeaten run to nine games in all competitions.
Town saw a lot of the ball in a changed system but the Swindon boss put the defeat down to individual and collective mistakes.
“It was a totally unacceptable performance.
"I've asked the players about the system, I've asked the players about their individual performances, I've asked the players about team selection and I take full responsibility for all of that.
"If I've got it wrong, I've got it wrong, I'll hold my hands up and apologise to the fans. But as far as I'm concerned, the underbelly of the team was exposed today by a solid second division outfit that looked like they had got their basics bang on and we hadn't.
“We missed aggression from the front, closing down from the front, aggression in the tackle, aggression in the system – organisation.”
Brown made three changes from the Checkatrade Trophy win on Tuesday, and five from last weekend’s draw with Northampton but said that the players that played did not grab the shirt.
“I said to the players that I have left out, they’ve got every reason to bang my door down and that’s what I want – but today, it was almost that we accepted their gameplan was to get ahead in the game, which was a long punt and a nothing goal as far as I’m concerned.
“The blame lies all over the park, the blame lies ultimately with me.
“It’s not about systems – you can play whatever you want to play – when you’re on the ball you pass it to red or, today, black shirt and make your system work and we didn’t do enough of that.
“The players who played today – not one of them can be disgruntled if they’re left out. Consistency is the key to any success that you get and at the moment we haven’t got that but it’s not for the want of trying.
“You come to Exeter and you’re not going to get a free ride – Exeter probably aren’t passing the ball probably as well as what they did last year yet they’re top of the league. They get the ball into the right areas and then they produce and our end product today was absolutely nothing short of abysmal.
“You expect chances to come your way and one or two of them did to the right person – Marc Richards, a sharp Rico, one that’s on top of the game, a confident Rico and it’s 1-1 at half-time and we have a foothold in the game.
“I didn’t think we had a foothold in the game for one minute today – I thought they stayed behind the ball. They didn’t pressure us, they let us have it in certain areas – as soon as we came into their third, there were men in your face and that’s good play.”
