Swindon Town manager David Flitcroft has begun work on January recruitment

Swindon Town manager David Flitcroft has confirmed that, since the start of the month, he has been planning for movement in the upcoming January transfer window.

Following Friday night's 3-2 home defeat to Colchester, Swindon have just three matches before the end of 2017 which will signal both the new year and the opening of the winter transfer window.

Unless there is rapid improvement in that trio of games (Crewe away followed by Luton and Notts County at home), Swindon will be under-performing in their attempt to return to League One at the first attempt.

The Robins are 12th at the moment and are currently in a rut of five straight defeats in all competitions.

Flitcroft was appointed Town manager in the summer and is no stranger to the recruitment process at the County Ground as his squad revamp in pre-season saw 17 players brought in - 12 permanently as well as five loan players.

Currently, 28 players at Swindon are part of the squad in the sense that they have been given squad numbers but five of those (Will Henry, Tom Smith, Joe Romanski, Jordan Young and Scott Twine) have not played a single minute in the league thus far, meaning Flitcroft has only used 24 players in League Two this campaign.

Conor Thomas made two appearances off the bench before departing to ATK in the Indian Super League.

Flitcroft is planning to ring the changes next month if his current bunch of players can't stop the current string of poor results.

He said post-match on Friday: "With the window looming and coming up, it gives us chance to remedy it and if the current crop of players can't do it or keep making the same errors and mistakes, we'll look to do something different.

"We'll make sure we'll put a halt to it and put a stop to it. That's what we'll be working on in the hours and days and weeks leading up to the window."

At Flitcroft's press conference unveiling back in June, Swindon Town chairman Lee Power said the ex-Barnsley and Bury boss will have one of the most competitive budgets in the division this season, but Flitcroft conceded on Friday that players may have to leave in order to bring in new faces.

"It'll possibly require movement (out). We've got five loan signings that we either engage in or don't engage in and we've got potential players that we could move out to bring in extra players.

"We're working on that, it's something we've probably been working on for 10 days now as December started and we'll continue to do so."

Should Flitcroft want to exploit the loan market again, he would be allowed to do so, however Swindon are only permitted to name five in a matchday squad of 18, so if any more come in, an appropriate amount of loanees would have to miss out.

Loan players are not permitted to be signed at the closing of the window, per FIFA's updated regulations.