The simple explanation would be to blame the Manager of the Month curse, of course. Or you could blame the ref for one or two bewildering decisions, especially the yellow card for Roper which made him too frightened to tackle the player for the first goal (when will referees learn the difference between a genuine attempt to win the ball that’s slightly mistimed, when contrasted with his refusal to book a Swindon player a few minutes later for a tackle from behind in a similar position?).

Really, though, it’s better to admit we just ran into a better team on the day.

Granted the fact that Mark Wright decided to have one of his absent days didn’t help, but Swindon, playing a fluid system of 4 3 3 when in possession, moving to a 4 1 4 1 when we had the ball, had several players who just had too much pace for us. It was particularly noticable in the midfield, where Dobson, Kinsella and Fox were all found wanting, as they struggled to match the sheer speed of the Swindon midfield.

Add to that the fact that the Robins also had the outstanding individual on the pitch, in the shape of number 34 Michael Timlin, who, playing just in front of the back four, broke up just about every attack we made and the result looked more and more inevitable once they had taken the lead.

The game was won with a goal in each half, but Walsall has few chances to get themselves back inot the game once Jutkiewicz rounded Roper on the edge of the box, with the defender unwilling to make the tackle as he was already on a yellow, to coolly slot past Clayton Ince.

Swindon then didn’t really enamour the crowd much with some blatant time wasting, which the referee let go unpunished, but it’s difficult to understand why they were doing it, whent hey didn’t really look in any trouble.

Chances for the home side were few and far between. Westwood had a header cleared off the line early on, Kinsella had an overhead kick which was saved comfortably by the ‘keeper, Pead (on for Kinsella) made one tremendous run and crossed only for Butler to mistime his jump and head over and Pead, again, produced a long range effort which clipped the top of the bar, but, by then , Swindon had gone two up, as the referee gave a dubious looking penalty against Scott Dann and Welsh International Christian Roberts scored.

Richard Money made what I thought was his first tactical errors of the season, throwing no less than four strikers on to try and save the game (including Dann, thrown up front when Gerrard came on), when it was in the midfield that the afternoon was lost, so they got no decent possession.

Roper and Dann came out of the game with some credit, as did Ince, but no one else can really hold their head up too high, other than the two subs, Pead and Sam, who looked like they should have been on earlier in place of Kinsella, struggling to keep up, and the ineffective Tommy Wright.

Let’s hope that, with the home record gone, we can relax and get back to winning ways quickly, as the other results weren’t too bad and we are still 9 points clear of fourth.