SWEDE Simon Gustafsson was happy to hush a few of his critics following his display at Eastbourne on Saturday night.

Gustafsson’s place in the Robins side had been in significant doubt following a string of below-par performances, but the Eastbourne asset roared back with 15 points against his parent club as the Robins went down 54-37.

Not only did his points tally impress but also the manner in which he got them, with a handful of good passes on his former teammates, leading to a positive answer when asked by the Advertiser if the real Simon Gustafsson had been on display at Arlington.

“Yes, I hope so,” he said. “That’s where I want to be and obviously that is where I can be so I have to stay calm and keep banging in some points.

“I’m really happy with my performance although it’s a shame we lost because it’s always sad to lose a meeting, but we have to take positives and thankfully for me there are a lot of them.

“It was a case of me being on it because I’ve been struggling a little with my confidence and have been dropping points in Poland and Sweden, and obviously over here too. I had a good one in Sweden on Tuesday and now here, so hopefully it’s back.

“Confidence does a lot for people and that’s what it’s all about in this game.

“You want to have a winning team and you can’t keep riders who aren’t scoring, that’s the name of the game.

The next job for Gustafsson is to produce the good around his home track, starting tonight when Belle Vue come to Blunsdon, and the Swede is already tentatively looking at the play-offs.

“We have to do it every week now and I want to show the home fans what I can do,” he said.

“I’ve had good meetings there before so I’m not too worried, I just need to calm down a bit and do what I can do.

“It should be a win and must be a win and, if we all do what we need to do, we should be reaching the play-offs I reckon “It’s a long season and we haven’t done many home meetings so if I can fire and we can get our reserves going again then we are in with a good chance of doing something.”