Marcel Lavinier thinks Swindon need to develop a more ruthless edge to kill games off

Marcel Lavinier thinks Swindon need to develop a more ruthless edge if they are to fulfil their potential after their 3-3 draw with Gillingham. Total Sport’s Joe Acklam spoke to the defender after the game.

After a whirlwind first 15 minutes in which Swindon took the lead and then find themselves 3-1 down, a Charlie Austin brace saw Town claw themselves back into it and earn a point.

Lavinier was frustrated at how Swindon let Gillingham back into the game after scoring in the first minute of the match.

He said: “We can’t start the game the way we did, we scored first, but then allowing them back in the game, we can’t let that happen.

“We have to kill teams off from the start, and we could have done that today, but we allowed them to get back in the game and take the lead.

“It is a mindset that the whole team needs to have, we need to go out there every week and look to finish teams off.

“Get one, get two and be ruthless, and not do what we did today in the first half and get the first goal and then take our foot off the gas.

“I think if everyone has that mentality going into every game then we will blow teams away.

“It is a mentality that any player can have, if you look at Man City, they have talented players, but they also have the mentality to be relentless and win game after game.”

Lavinier also said that despite being two goals down at half-time, the Swindon players remained calm and believed that they could get something from the game.

He said: “It was calm because we know that that was not our standard, we knew we needed to improve, we knew we needed to play our football and in times like that everyone needed to keep a calm head.

“If everyone starts worrying and starts panicking then the game gets frantic and that is not what you need.

“You need everyone to keep their head, everyone has to say ‘it was a bad start, but in the second half we need to do this, this, this, and this’ and we did that.

“The lads showed great character to get back in the game and we should have won it at the end, I thought.

“I felt that the extra midfielder in the second half helped us because we were able to control the game and move it from side to side and gaps appeared, so credit to Gav [Gunning] for that decision.”