SWINDON Town’s impressive start to the season continued last weekend as Brad Barry’s first professional goal ended Port Vale’s unbeaten start to the campaign.

Before arriving in Wiltshire, the Valiant’s hadn’t conceded a goal in League One, but they lost that record early in the second half as a slight position change in midfield led Michael Doughty to play a more advanced role, leading to his superb pass being finished off by Barry.

Out of all the seven new arrivals at the County Ground this summer, re-signing Doughty has been and will be the most exciting.

After making an instant impact at Town last season, re-signing the QPR midfielder was a must, and thankfully the chairman pulled it off.

With him possessing talents that should be on show in the Championship, this should be his last season in the third tier of English football. Let’s hope this season he can lift himself and Town out of League One.

Another performance of note was that of on-loan Liverpool defender Lloyd Jones.

Last Monday, Coventry announced the permanent signing of former on-loan defender Jordan Turnbull.

Despite having an average 2015/16 campaign, I would’ve personally signed the young centre back, but with that horse well and truly bottled, it’s time to move on, and in Jones it seems we’ve found a superb replacement.

Jones, along with Nathan Thompson and Jamie Sendles-White, never seemed under much pressure against Vale but whenever the away side did break forward, Jones was there to clear the danger.

Similar to Turnbull, Jones has the ability to read the game and doesn’t seem fazed whenever he had the ball in his possession. He’s not the finished article, but shows huge promise.

This weekend Town face local rivals Bristol Rovers at the County Ground.

With the club not having any league derbies last season, it’ll be the first time this squad would have experienced a West Country clash.

It’ll be down to captain Nathan Thompson to remind the squad how much this game means to the fans, but I’m sure when they walk out onto the pitch and hear the noise, that’ll be all they need to tell them the importance of the game.

Follow me on Twitter @danwjonson

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