MARTIN Ling says Swindon Town’s sticky Christmas spell shows there is still plenty of work to do in his recovery job.

Ling started his tenure at the County Ground with five wins from his first six League One fixtures but games against two of the top three in Gillingham and Burton Albion were always going to provide a more definitive reflection of Town’s revival.

So it proved as a 1-0 loss at Burton yesterday followed the 3-1 home defeat to the Gills on Boxing Day.

Although Ling feels his side’s current position of 16th in the table is a tad harsh, thoughts of Town sustaining their charge up the league were always likely to be premature.

“I see Swindon Town as better than where we are in the league but not quite ready to be up there with the top boys,” Ling told the local media. “I feel we are competitive in every game now. We go into every game knowing that if we put our best foot forward we have got a good chance of winning it.

“There’s been periods of both the Gillingham game and today where I felt we could cope and are more than capable of coping.

“I didn’t get carried away but there were an awful lot of wins consecutively and people started to look upwards.

“We know where we are. I came into a difficult situation, we’ve steadied the ship and got some results but we need to kick on again.”

Town were only beaten by a penalty 13 minutes from time against the Brewers as substitute Lucas Akins capitalised after Jordan Turnbull had felled Stuart Beavon.

Ling says the extra game in Town’s legs was a big factor in the result, with Burton having seen their Boxing Day fixture postponed.

“I thought the performance was good, especially first half. We came here against a team near the top of the table and obviously a bit fresher than us with not playing their game on Boxing Day,” said Ling.

“They are going to have their purple patch and I think you have got to put it down to the fact that we have played on Boxing Day against the fact that they haven’t. There is always going to be more in their legs.

“To come here is a difficult task at the best of times but to come here off the back of playing that game on Boxing Day and them not playing makes it a real big task.

“We were in the game all the way through and players can do two games in three games but if both sets of players do it, it’s a bit fairer.”