SWINDON Town manager John Sheridan lamented another batch of comical goals after his side were beaten 3-0 at home by Accrington Stanley on Tuesday night.

A Joe Fryer slip led to Stanley’s first after just seven minutes – a moment which more or less set the tone for the rest of the evening.

Colby Bishop reacted quickest to flick in the visitors’ second midway through the first half before Stanley cut through Town far too easily to add a third just before the break.

Sheridan – who was marking his first game as boss at the County Ground – made no excuses for his team and once again criticised Town’s inability to defend.

He said: “It’s a poor display losing the game 3-0 when you’re at home and in the position we are.

“We know we’ve got to be stronger defensively.

“The goals that we’ve conceded, both tonight and on Saturday, have been comical goals and we’re giving ourselves a mountain to climb.

“We did it on Saturday and we got away with it thanks to a good performance and a lot of character in the second half.

“I’m trying to be as positive as I can and trying to praise the players leading up to this game, but we can’t go out and perform like that and gift the goals we did.”

On Saturday, Swindon recovered twice from going two goals down to snatch a point away at Shrewsbury, however, on Tuesday night the Robins hardly looked like scoring at all as the vast majority of the side endured a torrid evening.

Sheridan mentioned before the game that his players must start faster if they are to climb up the League One table, but once again, they did not heed his words very carefully after the avoidable own goal that kicked off proceedings.

The new Town boss said his players must become a little more streetwise if they are to avoid going a goal down before they have chance to impose their own game.

He said: “We gave ourselves a mountain to climb straight away in the first 20 minutes, but we were sloppy all night.

“It’s a tough league, this. We’ve got good footballers, possession-wise, but we’ve got to know how to play the game a little bit differently when we’re going out onto the pitch.

“I felt we were too slow when we had the ball, we had a lot of the ball without really hurting them.

“We haven’t really worked the goalkeeper, and we had too many people wanting to do the same thing. It’s a performance that I’ll reflect on and say: “no, that was nowhere near good enough.””