INSTALLING confidence and belief back into the mindset of Swindon Town’s players when entering the final third has been identified as an area to work on by manager Phil Brown.

Town dominated possession and out-shot Cambridge United 18 to eight during Tuesday night’s 2-0 defeat against Joe Dunne’s side, which dropped Swindon into the bottom half of the League Two table.

Of those 18 shots, just six were directed on target.

Marc Richards had a strong second-half header pushed wide, but that was Town’s only genuine chance throughout the game as James Dunne came closest to scoring prior to that when a weak effort trickled beyond David Forde’s post.

Brown said: “Confidence is key anything you do, whether you’re in football or working elsewhere.

“My confidence comes from the players playing well, and they are playing well to a certain extent.

“It’s that last two, three or five per cent, whatever you want to call it, that’s letting us down at the moment.

“We’ll keep working on the training ground as hard as we possibly can to alleviate that pressure and hopefully relax the players in the final third for Saturday (against Notts County).

“Fans are going to get frustrated when a team doesn’t quite get over the line.

“But I’ll go back to the effort and attempts on goal. If we weren’t trying, I could understand the fans’ reaction.

“But they can surely see that the players are working hard enough to try and alleviate the pressure that’s coming on everybody.”

Concerns were also raised in the aftermath of Town’s latest defeat about the squad’s inability to perform sufficiently in the ‘ugly’ side of the game.

While no goals were conceded from set-pieces, a rare abysmal pass from Toumani Diagouraga gifted Cambridge their opening goal before Olly Lancashire’s failure in marking Jevani Brown doubled the visitors’ lead.

Confidence dented, the Town boss still insists he has an honest group players.

He said: “A good group of honest players is a good start. The supporters getting behind the team, that’s a recipe for success. But we've got to get them to support us.

“We didn’t start the game properly, so you’re going to get antagonistic support that questions certain players’ behaviour.

“As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t have to question that behaviour. I thought the players put their bodies on the line and that they were playing for the badge and playing hard enough.

“It’s just that creativity in the final third.

“When you gift a team two goals at the start of the game, I would say that’s the ugly side.

“People come to the County Ground to take money out of your pockets and we didn’t stop them (Cambridge) from doing that.”