Ian Holloway believes Swindon have “come an awful long way” during his time in charge, with a 5-1 thrashing of bottom club Carlisle making it four consecutive League Two wins.
Dan Butterworth, Aaron Drinan, Joe Westley, Paul Glatzel and Will Wright were all on the scoresheet for the Robins, who took full advantage of a red card for Jordan Jones in the second half to run riot in Cumbria.
Holloway said: “It was a tough one actually, I thought they started well.
“The first, 20-30 minutes we didn’t get to grips with their shape. Considering it’s such a new team, they caused us all sorts of problems.
“We scored just before half-time and at that point it was against the run of play and was a blow for them to be brutally honest.
“The second one was the nail in their coffin. We spoke at half-time about what we needed our front man to do to their back-line and that gave us an extra man further back, which we saw with Aaron’s goal.”
Holloway was beaming with pride, as when he took over in October, the Robins were 22nd and in a relegation battle. Now they are 14th and looking at teams above them instead of those below.
“I’m really delighted with that. We wouldn’t have been able to do that a few months ago and the strength on the bench we had to do what we did to them on the counter-attack after the sending-off, I’m absolutely delighted. We’ve come an awful long way,” Holloway added.
On the other hand it deepened Carlisle’s misery, with the Blues back at the foot of the table after results elsewhere – five points adrift of safety.
Carlisle have made 11 signings in the January window and nine of them were involved at Brunton Park, but the Cumbrians are still having the same problems that plagued them in the first half of the season.
Boss Mike Williamson said: “We’re really disappointed. We’re getting punished for simple things consistently, it seems to be a consistent narrative which is hard to stomach.
“We were on the front foot for the first 20-30 minutes. We’ve created chances, but we need to be clinical. At the minute we’re not taking our chances.
“I’m stood here speaking on the back of that result and it’s embarrassing. It’s difficult to stomach, difficult to digest. Two goals came as a result of goal-kicks, one from a corner and two counter-attacks. It’s hard to process at the moment.”
Despite the result, Williamson is determined to continue fighting.
“We’ve got to dust ourselves down and come back, we’ve got to fight and work on controlling games,” he added. “This comes off the back of two really good performances, one with a result to show at Fleetwood and one which doesn’t at Notts County, so that’s frustrating.”
