SWINDON Town’s young players are becoming more and more vocal, according to manager Mark Cooper.

A feature of Swindon’s pre-season was the relative quiet in which Town went about their business, and when questioned on the subject Cooper said he was happy for his senior squad members to lead by example rather than by barking orders.

However, after the opening-day victory over Scunthorpe United at the County Ground, the Swindon boss highlighted some encouraging signs that he may have a handful of leaders-in-the-making amongst his ranks.

He said: “They just want to play. At half-time (against Scunthorpe) you can hear Mass and Yaser and Louis Thompson telling each other ‘we need to do that, you need to do this’, which is what we want. That’s the atmosphere we’re trying to create.

“We’re trying to get them looking after each other. We can set them up and show them and tell them what we need but sometimes they need to grasp it. At half-time I could sense that they were.

“You want people with voices to organise the team, on and off the pitch. That’s what good teams do. It’s very interesting listening to them, as young as they are, they’re starting to talk about football all the time, which is really encouraging.”