PATIENCE is key for Swindon Town manager Phil Brown, who admits he will wait for the right characters to show interest in the club before adding to his options in defence and up front.

Brown watched his men slip to a 2-0 home pre-season friendly defeat against Portsmouth at the Energy Check County Ground on Saturday as second-half goals from Oliver Hawkins and Jamal Lowe earned Kenny Jackett’s men the win.

While results are of little importance to Brown, the Town boss admitted he is yet to improve the defensive and forward units of his side – adding injuries and wrong characters for his current squad are partly to blame for that.

“We’ve got a good group, I don’t want to spoil it by bringing in two or three bad ones,” said Brown.

“We’re piecing the jigsaw together, slowly but surely, and if you look at the four departments – goalkeeper, defence, midfield and attack – I believe we’ve improved two of those departments.

“Up front, we’ve been weakened by the injuries to Kaiyne Woolery and Marc Richards. If I can bring one striker in, and defence is something I pride myself on with clean sheets.

“If I can get two before the deadline, I will do, but they’ve got to be the right players.”

Pre-season games prior to Saturday saw Brown largely allow his players to be free on the pitch without his influence from the touchline.

But for the first time, Brown started to judge his players’ individual performances with an eye to fine-tuning his squad’s tactical awareness in the next fortnight.

With less than two weeks remaining until Town’s first League Two fixture of the season against Macclesfield Town, the 59-year-old admitted work is still to be done.

He added: “We still need to improve on the front-line in terms of goals, and we need to massively improve on the back-line in terms of either a couple of centre halves or a full-back that can play either side.

“Saturday was the start of that (judging performance). I was asking players to play for their shirts.

“And I thought young lads like Steven Alzate, Ellis Iandolo and Martin Smith – that midfield looked very compact and comfortable. They did what we asked of them.

“We were creative as well, and one of the strongest parts of our game will be the midfield – whether it be a two, three or four.

“There’s still work to be done in the next two weeks, but I go back to the days when I was at Bolton Wanderers and we lost six out of seven pre-season friendlies – and a lot of those defeats were quite handsome to the opposition, getting beat by six goals.

“Those were horrible days, then we made one signing on the day before the season started and we went on an 11-game unbeaten run.”

Town are next in action on Friday night at the Webbswood Stadium when travelling to face Lee Spalding’s Swindon Supermarine.