SWINDON Town manager John Sheridan says now is the time for his side to chain together a series of results that keeps the club in League One next season.

A credible draw away to Lincoln City on Tuesday night saw Sheridan’s men avoid consecutive defeats for the first time this season – a result that means Town have only lost two of their previous five.

Wins over Wigan Athletic and Crewe Alexandra book-ended defeats against Portsmouth and Shrewsbury Town, but the result against relegation rivals Northampton Town at the weekend will give important context to the recent quintet of matches.

Sheridan is keen to add three more points to his side’s tally on Saturday in order to continue the brief spell of momentum Town are beginning to build up.

He said: “In the position we’re in, if we can consistently get our performances up to that standard every time, we’ll be OK.

“But unfortunately, looking at the way our season has gone, we’ve been very inconsistent.

“We’ve got to take that performance and build on it.

“This is the best time to go on a run for the season. If we can go on a little run of picking points up in consecutive games, this is the time to do it.

“We’ll take a lot out of the Lincoln game, we can talk about how well we played but we’ve got to take it into Saturday against Northampton.”

Although results have been slightly more encouraging to Town fans in recent weeks, the level of performance has violently fluctuated.

The win over Wigan was achieved by a strong team performance while success over Crewe occurred after sheer wastefulness from David Artell’s men.

Defeat to Shrewsbury was completely deserved due to a meek and uninspired display, yet the bright showing during the draw at Lincoln could have produced three points on another day.

When asked what his side did differently at Sincil Bank to rattle the league leaders, Sheridan said: “We didn’t do anything (differently) – we’ve had good performances when we’ve been beaten.

“Sometimes you take a lot of positives out of games when you’ve been beaten too. We were organised, people knew their job descriptions.

“I moved Dom Thompson further up – I took a gamble there – but the shape of the team was good. It was just a good performance, and it was unfortunate that we didn’t win the game.”