Richie Wellens was pleased with his team’s overall performance, even at half-time, when Swindon were two-down against league leaders Lincoln City.
Town had trailed at the break but Michael Doughty bagged a brace off the bench to salvage a point with five minutes to play ensuring a 2-2 draw at the County Ground.
Lincoln were reduced to nine men when defender Jason Shackell was sent off for dissent after Bruno Andrade’s lash-out in the first half had resulted in a red card for the Imps’ wide man.
Wellens claimed his side were unfortunate to be 2-0 down at the break and was still positive at the break.
“You can only really analyse the game in the first half an hour – you know, after the sending off, they’re going to camp out in their own box. Before the first sending off, they couldn’t breathe – we pressed the life out of them, played good football, made the keeper work but again our deficiencies…
“The only time they’ve gone into our penalty box they scored from a second-phase header – mentally that can hurt, the sucker punch, playing really well but going one behind. But I thought we were brilliant even in that first half an hour.
“Loads of positives – we come in at half-time having made mistakes, the second goal, it’s a great strike but we shouldn’t have given him the opportunity to score a wonder goal. We come in half-time at 2-0 down but we were really positive, because we’d been really good but we just switched off twice.
“It goes down to nine men and it’s a bit of a farcical game – it’s just attack against defence and they’re no real threat at all.
“It was about us trying to get in the right areas to score and we had umpteen opportunities – ricochets and at the end you’re just waiting for someone to kick it in from a yard out.
“Kaiyne Woolery should have scored from a header – we had loads of chances, but loads of positives.”
Wellens made a change that ultimately got Town a point – the half-time substitution of Michael Doughty which bore two goals, and set Canice Carroll free at right-back.
“Michael Doughty’s come on at half-time and scored two which is one of the most pleasing things of the day.
“We knew we needed to score and Doughty’s obviously an attacking player who can score and Kyle is our best one-on-one defender in the squad – but we don’t need a one-on-one defender, we need to get up the pitch.
“Canice has got good quality because he’s a midfield player so would make the right decision in the final third and I thought at times he did.”
