Town Flier with Peter Mitchell

Swindon 4 vs 2 Burton Albion

Swindon made heavy weather of this game when twice leading by a clear three goals.

In the last 20 minutes Albion dominated but Town held on to repeat their opening two goal league win.

Minutes after Lucas Akins had pulled Albion back into the game with their second, the same player had another header come back off the inside of the Town post.

A goal then might have changed the game dramatically.

Despite the BBC commentary team insisting for the first 20 minutes that Matt Palmer was playing in midfield, he was nowhere to be seen and seems unlikely to figure in a Town shirt again.

The confusion seemed to be with Matt Smith, the young Arsenal loanee, who had another good game and seems a tremendous prospect.

Town’s defence is definitely of concern, especially if they can only field one established central defender.

It continues to look vulnerable whenever it is confronted with a free kick or corner.

Of course young keeper Matej Kovar needs game time to gain experience, but if you want to see a visual example of the word “nonchalance”, then look no further!

Until he changes his style there will be plenty of entertainment for the fans.

To offset these concerns the attack looks highly potent and Town have now scored seven times in their first two home league games.

What a pity hardly a cheer has been heard to reward some finely taken goals.

There is an exuberance about their play coming forward, and they will give any team a lot to think about.

All three conversions in the first half marked debut goals for the club by Jordan Stevens, Brett Pitman and captain Mathieu Baudry.

Stevens has joined from Leeds on a season’s loan and, after winning the ball, he then tucked it expertly home from a return pass.

Pitman was making his first start for Swindon and placed a shot into the corner of the net, after good interplay from Matt Smith and Jack Payne.

Less than five minutes later Baudry crashed in a header from a Paul Caddis corner.

Caddis had another excellent game and was constantly pushing forward to create good openings.

Minutes before the break Town were slow coming out after a set play and Burton’s Stephen Quinn punished them with a good shot through a crowded penalty area.

When Town got their fourth from Jonny Smith on the hour mark, it looked game over, but Albion were a different kettle of fish to Rochdale, and both Zeki Fryers and Rob Hunt decided to leave Akins unmarked for his header to kick-start a pressure period for the visitors.

Not sure why Diallang Jayesimi was missing from the squad, but Swindon underlined their abundant attacking options by scoring four times without him.

Next week Town travel to Peterborough, never an easy trip, to face one of the favourites at the start of the season.

This marks the first of no less than seven league games during October.

With the latest restrictions it now seems certain that very few spectators will be fortunate enough to attend matches for the next several months.

Isn’t it about time that the Premier League giants started to show the responsibility and commitment that they spoke about at the beginning of this pandemic?

They get the advantages when EFL clubs take their players on loan to give them valuable match experience, and also when they pick up potential stars from the feeder leagues.

A couple of million quid for each of the 72 clubs – especially those 48 in Leagues One and Two – could make the difference between them still being there or not at the end of the season.

£150 million split between the higher echelon would be relatively peanuts - and give the premiership a lot more credit amongst the ordinary fans.