TOWN boss Mark Cooper does not complain about matters he cannot control within his own club.

Despite clearly being frustrated, he is making the best of his very limited resources and refused to make excuses as his depleted side lost out to a Sheffield United team who are at the other end of the scale when it comes to squad depth.

The Blades made 10 changes to their team that lost at Fulham in midweek, with Cooper admitting that he would struggle to find 10 players to bring in.

His side, featuring a back line who had barely even played in the positions asked of them before, let alone together, did well. For 70 minutes Swindon controlled the game, albeit without creating many chances.

That might sound like a slight, but Town played with purpose in midfield and put together some lovely passages. They lack a striker confident enough to scare a team currently and the experience to stay focused when things do not go their way immediately.

Ultimately the Blades quality shone through. They kept Town at arm’s length, went ahead from a set-piece and then Billy Sharp, a natural goalscorer at this level, sealed the game.

Town were not bad and Cooper did not think they deserved to come away with nothing.

"The worst result that should happen today is 0-0 - we should not be losing that game,” he told the local press.

"It was a very tactical game, especially the first-half, which I thought we had the better of in terms of possession.

“We had a couple of half-chances which we could have probably done better with.

“You could see our inexperience. We started hitting 90-yard Hollywood balls instead of us keeping playing.

"It comes down to pure concentration.”

Cooper thought there was a foul in the build-up to the Blades’ first goal, when Neill Collins got up highest to plant his header over Lawrence Vigouroux and Anton Rodgers.

However, he accepted that ultimately the visitors played their own game well and benefitted from the quality in their team at key moments.

“Fair play to Sheffield United,” he added. “You could see they came to wait and see if we made a mistake and when you've got people like Billy Sharp and Conor Sammon in your team, they only need half a chance and it is a goal.

"We will struggle to compete with that.

"As well as we played in patches with the ball, without creating too much, we probably had twelve or thirteen players we could pick from.

"I went to watch Sheffield United the other night and they changed ten players for players that would still probably finish in the play-offs in this league, so that's great for Sheffield United.

“I thought we deserved a little bit more today.

“We’re down on numbers and injuries, illness and we came out fighting.”