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Five Things We Learned: Swindon Town 1-0 Bradford City
Swindon Town got back to winning ways in League One on Saturday with a 1-0 victory over Bradford and Total Sport's Ryan Walker says we can learn five things from Saturday's success.
1) Keep the momentum going
Being undefeated in their last two outings may not sound like much of a hot streak, but for Swindon it is equally their second best unbeaten run in the league this season since achieving the feat in mid-October.
But with the pressure starting to mount on Tim Sherwood and his staff, now that the novelty of having a former Premier League manager in charge has worn off, it is important that Swindon keep making progress.
A tough Christmas run-in sees Town take on three of the current top ten in, Sheffield United, Fleetwood, and Millwall, and this testing period will certainly show what Swindon Town are truly made of.
2) Raphael Branco and Lloyd Jones are a solid partnership
With injuries persistent to the SN1 defence so far this season, it has been hard for Luke Williams to find a consistently solid centre back partnership. In Lloyd Jones and Raphael Branco, Williams has certainly found a working formula.
Both are imposing figures that will cause havoc in an opposition's penalty area from set-pieces, but the versatility between the two also makes for a solid back line that is hard to break down.
Tough runs of fixtures await, but in Branco and Jones, Town are surely starting to build that defensive rock.
3) Could Lawrence Vigouroux be on his way out?
Swindon initially took a chance when they signed goalkeeper Lawrence Vigouroux for an undisclosed fee from Liverpool after his loan spell at the club last season but the 23-year-old Chilean has proved all his doubters wrong in the first third of this campaign.
A string of impressive performances this season, in which he has saved Swindon losing even more matches, there is now talk that the former Tottenham academy player may be on his way out of SN1.
With a three-year contract signed, Sherwood and Williams will be eager to keep hold of their shot stopper but with Championship clubs such as Newcastle and Norwich rumoured to be interested, it would be hard for Swindon to turn down a big-money offer.
4) A goal-scoring striker is needed
While Town have started to improve defensively in the most recent of fixtures, their lack of ability to score more goals unfortunately hasn’t.
With Swindon only being able to score a lowly ten goals over the last two months of league football, it’s clear that they are certainly lacking that goal-scoring touch.
Only four league goals have been scored by Swindon’s first choice strikers of Jonathan Obika (three) , Nathan Delfouneso (one), and Luke Norris, who is yet to score a league goal, it is clear that this is the area Town are struggling in the most.
The opening of the transfer window is just around the corner and this is certainly an area that Sherwood will start to strengthen.
5) Tom Smith continues to impress
Since making his first team debut for Swindon Town earlier this year, Tom Smith has certainly started to show his talents on the pitch.
After coming on for Town in place of Brandon Ormonde-Ottewill at the 50-minute mark, Smith put on a fantastic display and was a constant thorn in the Bradford City defence, even if he was playing out of position at left-back.
If Smith continues to impress as he does then it may not be long before we start to see the 18-year-old as a regular starter in Swindon red.
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