Cooper: We could have won the game

Town were left to rue another soft goal that ruined an otherwise solid performance in their 1-1 draw with Coventry City this afternoon.

Following an incident free opening 41 minutes, a poor back bass from Josh Lelan, who returned to the club on loan yesterday after his previous deal expired last weekend, allowed Jim O’Brien to ghost in and release Josh McQuoid to net.

But a 72nd minute header from Raphael Branco earned Swindon a well-deserved point.

And Cooper believed that his side could have gone on to win the contest.

Cooper told the medai after the game: “I thought that we could have won game. We went behind to Coventry’s only shot in the first half, after having numerous chances ourselves.

“It was a really sloppy goal from ourselves. We found ourselves one goal down at half-time, always felt that we would get back into it and we did.

“I fancied us to go on and win it but I felt the exertions from the game on Tuesday (against Brighton) had really taken it out of us.

“It is just an individual error (Coventry’s goal). It was a sloppy pass and it got cut out and we can’t recover.

“Young lads make mistakes, the way they get better is by playing and learning from those mistakes.

“We had numerous of opportunities of three v two, four v three where we probably could have picked a better option to create that final pass that leads to an easy goal, but we didn’t.

“I was really pleased with the players. The effort was incredible again, we couldn’t fill the bench as there was no-one else here.

“There were young boys on the bench again, Connor Waldon coming in and playing so it is a great point.”

The Town chief was forced to make a late change to his side when Michael Smith withdrew from the match with a cracked rib and injured shoulder despite being named in the starting XI.

The big striker, who took part in the warm-up, was replaced by Waldon.

“We missed big Michael today, but he was too sore in the warm-up,” Cooper said.