Swindon Town "lacked desire" in Cheltenham defeat, interim manager Matt Taylor believes

Swindon Town's player-manager Matt Taylor feels his side "lacked desire", as they lost 3-0 at home to Cheltenham.

Swindon started brightly on Saturday, but conceded a well-struck free-kick four minutes before the end of the first-half and were 2-0 down five minutes after the break.

It was 3-0 in the 72nd minute and Swindon were booed off, having managed only two shots on target over the course of the 90 minutes.

Taylor is not expected to get any more matches as interim manager, as Lee Power recently told the BBC that he will make a decision regarding the new manager this weekend, with an appointment expected next week.

Left-back Taylor kept the same formation as previous manager David Flitcroft and started himself as the left-sided wing-back in Swindon's 3-4-1-2 and, at full-time, suggested some of his players lacked desire during the match.

"We started the game well, then [it] just seemed we went off-piste and decided to maybe do things individually and I think that when you do that, you're never going to be successful," he said.

"We had a game plan and I'd say for the first sort of 10 or 15 minutes it was going well, and it all went to pot, unfortunately.

"The dressing room is very disappointed and down. We've had an honest conversation in there, and we move on.

"The thing is, as disappointing as it is, I've said from the beginning that I'll only deal in facts and that's what we've had the conversation about in there and now it's about moving forward.

"There's still 30 points to play for this season. We'll digest it, we'll take our medicine, so to speak, but just disappointed in the way that maybe that times in the game we maybe lacked a little bit of desire and personally I don't really understand that."

Swindon have dropped to ninth as a result of the Cheltenham defeat and now face a 10-game battle to get themselves back into the promotion places.

"We didn't retain the ball well enough either, at times we looked like we panicked on the ball," Taylor continued.

"The crazy thing is, in the week leading up to it, I felt the boys trained really well, had applied themselves as well as they could do, had a good training week, [and] all the information was taken on board, I thought, correctly but for some reason, we give away avoidable goals.

"[It's another] massive game Saturday. I don't like using that old adage it's 10 cup finals, because it's not, it's 10 league games, [there are] 30 points to play for and we'll try to pick up as many as possible."