THERE was not one tactical flaw with Town’s display at Fleetwood, there were many.

Although the biggest prevented them from building a platform to try and play the brand of football insisted upon by the man at the very top.

Post-game, Martin Ling was particularly unimpressed by his players’ ability to compete for the ball and he was right. However a team of small, technical, players is not designed to have to put themselves through 90 minutes of 50/50 challenges.

The philosophy is one that is meant to reduce the necessity to fight for every ball by keeping it away from their opponents through prolonged periods of possession. Town were never able to get into this pattern as Fleetwood’s fierce high press reduced their ability to play from the back and forced them to kick long.

There was clearly something new that the chief designer of Town’s play, Luke Williams, had worked on with the defence to improve this. On multiple occasions Raphael Branco and Lawrence Vigouroux swapped several passes in order to get the defender on the front foot going forward, but it clearly did not work as anticipated.

But this was not even the biggest problem. When Swindon did get out the quality of their wing-backs so severely stunted their play they were unable to make much of anything going forward or even keep the ball.

It is increasingly clear that Nathan Byrne, Harry Toffolo, or even as he showed on Saturday, Amari’i Bell, have not been adequately replaced. If Town are going to play 3-5-2 the wing-backs play a vital role and Bradley Barry and Brandon Ormonde-Ottewill do not currently have the ability to fulfil it.

Byrne and Toffolo could be trusted with the ball, hold it up, beat a man and create. Their replacements struggle to replicate any of those skills consistently. They should be back-ups, instead they are learning hard lessons too often, damaging the team and their own development.

Too often the ball goes out to Barry or Ormonde-Ottewill and they lose it, or fail to move the team forward. Working the ball side to side only causes problems for so long.

Deficient personnel cannot be masked by tactics.