SWINDON Town head coach Luke Williams conceded that time is running out on their bid to maintain their League One status.

Williams’ side headed up the M5 to the Bescot Stadium two points off safety and despite suffering a 1-0 defeat at Walsall, courtesy of Joe Edwards’ 85th minute strike, their position remains the same.

However, with just two matches left of the season, at home to Scunthorpe United on Saturday, followed by a trip to Charlton Athletic on the final day of the season, games are running out for Town.

The result was further compounded after the final whistle as Town realised a win yesterday would have lifted them out of the relegation zone, with other results having gone their way.

“It’s a big, big blow,” said a dejected Williams.

“I think we are probably in the same situation, points wise, as we were before kick-off, which is almost more disappointing because we could be sitting now in a much healthier position.

“We have applied maximum pressure to ourselves and now we need to probably win the remaining two games and that’s the reality.

“We’ve put ourselves – nobody else has done it – in a position where we have got huge pressure on our shoulders and we’re not able to play and relax and build moves more patiently.

“We haven’t got the luxury of being able to set the team up in a way where we are very aggressive.

“Back-to-back wins over Millwall and Fleetwood demonstrated our ability to get back-to-back victories, even under pressure, so we can do it but the clock is ticking against us.”

Despite the defeat, which was sealed late in the game with Town pushing bodies forward in search of the elusive winner, Williams was content with the way his side approached the game.

“Again, I wanted the team to stay in the game for as long as possible,” he added.

“We probably started to be more attacking at the end of the game, put John Goddard high up the pitch, changed a full-back on his right foot playing left side with a very attacking left full-back, but still weren’t able to get the ball in the back of the net and, of course, conceded.

“The game plan, I haven’t got too much trouble with because we stayed in the game for a long, long time and as I said before, we don’t want to give ourselves a mountain to climb, we want to always be in the game.

“I think we broke quite well in the first half but once we got to the 18-yard box we weren’t able to make the clinical (decision).

“As people got tired and switched off, we should have the motivation to keep going and others maybe start to dwindle but it wasn’t to be.”