SWINDON Town manager Richie Wellens believes a soft underbelly to his squad could prove their undoing this season following a 3-2 EFL Trophy defeat to West Brom under 21s at the County Ground on Tuesday night.

Wellens made seven changes to the side that lost to Charlton Athletic in the League Cup on Saturday and a much-changed Town line up did not take their opportunity to grab a starting spot against Rochdale this weekend.

New signing Brett Pitman started up front but could not bag himself a debut goal while Matt Palmer, who played just four minutes last season after signing for Town in January, felt Wellens’ wrath post-match also.

With two defeats to start the new campaign, Wellens was left disappointed that very few players had grasped their early opportunity to impress – in particular, on Tuesday night.

He said: “I think some players need to look at themselves in the mirror because this was a good opportunity for some.

“But we need players in. We’ve promotion here and we’re wanting to start on a high, but you’ve seen today that is the under belly of our squad – it’s not great.

“We’re still trying to get a few people up to speed like Paul Caddis and Brett Pitman, who I thought did ok.

“We need a centre-back in as soon as possible, we need two midfield players and we’re probably going to need another attacker too.”

Town started brightly against the Baggies’ under 21s team but found themselves two goals down before the 50th minute.

A mad five minutes midway through the second half meant the score ended 3-2, but Town were left ruing several missed chances as their quest for a cup win under Wellens stretched into it’s eighth game.

Asked to dissect where he felt it went wrong for his team on Tuesday night, Wellens criticised the majority of his team, but singled out the attackers as a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing game.

Wellens said: “It was a poor result against what was a very, very young team.

“I thought our front players, at times, were quite bright. We could have scored eight or nine tonight easily, but sometimes in the first half, we took too many touches.

“Midfield lacked any legs, any power, any energy and at the back, we’ve conceded three goals when we’ve probably only faced three shots on target throughout.

“We don’t really need to go into detail about the defensive part of the game because we’ve conceded three goals from three shots when they were hardly ever a threat in the game.”