SWINDON Town manager John Sheridan defended his decision to not bring on any substitutes until added time of the club’s 2-1 defeat to Burton Albion on Monday.

The 56-year-old watched on as his team failed to make their dominance count at the Pirelli Stadium and the hosts thumped in a late header to secure all three points.

The winning goal crossed the line in the 83rd minute, but Sheridan opted not to bring on Tyler Smith and Joel Grant until well into added time.

Some fans criticised the Town boss on social media for his reluctance to change tactics, while a post-match question also focused on the subject.

Sheridan responded by suggesting his team was playing well enough to be able to react with the personnel already out there.

Asked why he didn’t throw substitutes on any earlier, Sheridan said: “I threw subs on last week.

“I expect people to have an opinion and you can ask me questions about throwing substitutes on, but we were so on top of the game.

“I possibly could have thrown a sub on when we went 2-1 down, but we were absolutely controlling the game.

“We’ve lost the game from not defending properly, not from not putting people on, but from making basic defensive mistakes.

“People should be doing better, they knew who they were marking so we knew when they score who should be doing better.”

Despite the disappointment of the club’s 24th League One defeat of the season, Sheridan pointed to several good things that his team were able to produce.

Town dominated sections of the game and rarely looked in much danger defensively before being undone late on via a set-piece.

Adding salt into Town wounds, a potentially season-ending injury for Ellis Iandolo took the shine off a decent performance, according to Sheridan.

He said: “I’m going to try and take the good things out of the game, and there were a lot of good things in the way we played, we passed it and looked confident.

“If any neutrals were watching, they would have thought we looked decent. But it’s the same old story – if you keep conceding goals like that then you’re going to lose football matches.

“Ellis going off didn’t help, so that was a big change for us straight away, but overall I thought we were in control of the game.

“But if you don’t win the game, you need to make sure you come away with a point, and we didn’t.”