Mark Kennedy thought that Swindon Town were off the pace as they were defeated 2-1 away against Port Vale.

Swindon were well-beaten on the road to bring an end to their undefeated start to the campaign on the road as Port Vale demonstrated a gulf in class on the day.

The hosts had to wait until the second half to take the lead despite creating numerous good chances before George Byers and Brandon Cover both scored prior to Will Wright's last-minute consolation with a free kick.

Kennedy said that he felt that The Valiants had been able to play the game on their terms and Swindon were made to pay because of it.

He said: "In terms of our football performance, I thought that we were below par today.

"In terms of the game it was a really ugly and physical game, we were aware of that and we knew it would be coming into the game but there is really not a lot we can do about that because we are missing a lot of height, physicality, and power, so it is what it is.

"We knew today could have been a brutal day and I thought that it was and Port Vale did everything to us that they set out to do.

"I thought we dealt with it well on the whole and rode our luck a couple of times undoubtedly, there were a couple of balls in the first half where I was waiting for the net to bulge.

"Every set piece and anything in the build up where the ball was out wide came into our box, set pieces, corners, free kicks, their goalie was taking free kicks on the halfway line.

"It was everything we thought it would be and my biggest disappointment is if I look at the goal, it was similar to last week where it wasn't the delivery or we got dominated by a six-foot-sour player.

"The lad who scored wasn't picked up and our front space man didn't do the job that he was asked to do, which is mindbogglingly frustrating."

The head coach added that he felt that Swindon needed to be braver with the ball during the game as it contributed to the pressure Port Vale could pour on.

He said: "Did I think we would suffer for most of the game? I hope we wouldn't as I thought with our technical ability we could try and take that away from them.

"The game looked like how I thought it would but on the ball we weren't at our best.

"My disappointment was that I didn't feel we were brave enough on the ball and that did disappointment.

"My one real gripe was we weren't brave enough, we have to play, we had an overload in build-up and we have to play.

"We had three at the back and they had two, we know where the spare man is and we didn't play enough when we should have done.