LUKE Williams believes that onus falls greatly on the Swindon Town management team to drag their players through the fire.

Town face a daunting trip to Walsall tonight, where they will go looking to avoid slipping to defeat for the sixth time in seven matches against a Saddlers side three points off the automatic promotion spots with a game in hand on second-placed Burton Albion.

With niggling relegation worries still not put to bed, Williams recognises that his charges find themselves in an unfamiliar position, given their paucity of experience – the average age of the Swindon squad stands at just 22 – and says that he and his fellow coaching staff have a responsibility to support their players as much as possible.

“When plenty of players are going through this experience for the first time in their career, it’s difficult for them to refer to anything as to how best to deal with the situation,” the Town head coach told the local media.

“All I can do, from my point of view and the staff’s, is to be consistent to try to lead them by showing a strength of character ourselves.”

Emergency loanee Jake Kean is set to play in goal once again at the Bescot Stadium after making his Town debut in last weekend’s 1-0 loss to Bury.

Swindon were forced to bring in the Norwich City man after Tyrell Belford was ruled out for season with a groin injury that he had exacerbated by playing through the pain barrier for two further games after first complaining of the problem on April 2.

Williams paid tribute to ‘soldier’ Belford’s commitment to the cause, even if the 21-year-old’s desire to keep playing cost him in the long run.

The Town chief said: “I think that every spectator in the world expects one thing, first and foremost, from the team they support and that is total commitment, and I think we’d all be very upset to think that players don’t want to play if they’re sore or they’ve got some sort of problem.

“We’d all expect players to do their utmost to be on the pitch and I think that anyone who knows Tyrell and his character would know that he really is a solider.

“He knows that we’ve lost people and he didn’t want to be so quick to pull himself off the front line – he wanted to be there to help.

“I’d rather have it that way around than (have) a player that I’m suspicious that he’s come to me too early and that there’s a not a great deal wrong, and he doesn’t want to play.”