SWINDON Town manager Mark Cooper says his players owe their fans a good home performance after a run of mediocre and substandard displays at the County Ground.

It’s been six weeks since the Robins last won a game on home turf - the 3-1 victory over Shrewsbury Town - and since then Cooper’s men have drawn three and lost one of their four outings.

Given Swindon’s flying start to the campaign in SN1, where Town won all bar one of their first five home matches, the recent barren streak is unfamiliar to supporters and Cooper stressed that his squad need to offer their fans some much needed respite.

“Training has been good and the boys have been in good spirits but I just hope they go and put a performance on at home now because we’re due a performance at home and send our fans home happy on a Saturday evening,” he said.

“We’re due a dominant performance where we can really dominate the football, create opportunities and score some goals.”

Town rediscovered their mojo at Crewe last weekend, playing 90 minutes of entertaining and attractive football during the 1-1 draw, and Cooper has praised his players for showing the “bravery” to stick with their ideals during a difficult period.

“We’ve always known we’ve got that performance in us because we’ve shown it numerous times throughout the course of the season but when you’ve got a group of numerous players, the age and newness of the group you’re going to get performances that are up and down,” he said.

“You’ll see the best of the players next year, I believe, but they’ve done really well so far. Yes, we’ve had some poor performances as a group and that’s a culmination of us trying to get where we want to get and creating a style we want to create.

“You’re going to have dips because it takes a lot of bravery not to boot the ball down the pitch but to play out and keep possession of the ball. That takes more bravery than going into a two-footed tackle and hoping you don’t come out the other end with a broken leg.

“When there are seven, eight, nine, 10 thousand people shouting at you ‘get it forward’ and you decide ’no, the coach asked me to get the ball on the floor and try to play’ that’s bravery.

“Over the next few months we’ll get better, we’ll have our dips but we will be better and we will win games by doing it.

“They will get better and better with age, whether they’re with us or back with their parent clubs or get sold or move on, they’ll get better. We have to keep preaching the philosophy and I know it’s frustrating at times but that’s the way we’re going to go, it’s not going to change.

“We’re going to try to produce players, try to play football and we believe over a number of games we’ll get more results doing that than we’d get booting it forward.”