SWINDON head coach Ryan Aldridge refused to be too downbeat after the Link Centre team were beaten 3-1 by Milton Keynes on Saturday.

Wildcats were aiming for their fourth EPL victory in a row at the SkyDome Arena in Coventry - MK’s temporary home - but instead suffered their fourth defeat out of four against Nick Poole’s men in 2013/14.

“I thought we played alright,” said Aldridge. “It’s easy to get negative on nights like tonight, but we were always in the game.

“I don’t think we played our best but we kept ourselves in the hockey game so we have to be positive about that.

“I won’t be hard on them after the way we’ve played recently.”

The head coach did admit, though, that the powerplay was an area that was giving him cause for concern.

“We’ve had a lot of games recently and we had a few powerplays tonight but our powerplay is struggling right now,” he said.

“We talked about it before the game, during the game and we just talked about it again.

“Because our key players are on the powerplay, they are logging a lot of ice time and were getting tired towards the end.”

Milton Keynes did the damage in less than 90 second-period seconds on Saturday.

First Jordan Cownie zipped the puck into the slot from the right wing and Leigh Jamieson slammed high past Stevie Lyle’s right shoulder (29.03).

And moments later Wildcats were punished for not getting the puck out when Blaz Emersic arrowed a top-shelf effort across Lyle (30.24) from just inside the blueline.

Aaron Nell gave Swindon hope at 32.21 when he managed to squeeze past goaltender Steve Wall, but MK did not slip up again.

The Lightning made sure of victory with seven seconds left as Emersic scooted down the left wing, dived inside and shot into an empty net.