'That was our best display under me' - Holloway pleased despite cup exit

Ian Holloway said that Swindon Town turned in their best performance under him despite exiting the FA Cup on penalties against Accrington Stanley.

Tyler Walton's close-range effort along with Danny Butterworth's first-half red card had Swindon up against it at The Wham Stadium but Grant Hall headed in an equaliser in first-half stoppage time.

Harry Smith missed a penalty before Joel Cotterill eventually gave Swindon the lead but Walton's second saw a victory snatched away from them in the 92nd minute.

Following an additional half-an-hour, penalties were needed to separate the two teams but Accrington came out on top after Swindon missed their first two.

Holloway was delighted with the performance of his side even if he felt they let themselves down a little bit in conceding the goals.

He said: "Everybody has watched it and I think that that was our best performance since I have been here even down to ten men.

"The only thing that we got wrong has that we saved some good efforts from them but they followed up, they followed up, and they followed up.

"They got four first contacts after we made a save and we were just ball-watching, I have seen it a few times and that is what cost us as we were reacting rather than anticipating and they did that.

"They went in front and we went down to ten men but I thought we were absolutely terrific after that and before it as well as I don't think they deserved to go 1-0 up.

"I can't fault my lads' performance, I thought they were very good, everybody wanted the ball, everybody moved the ball, we were a handful, we created chances with only ten men, and scored two with only ten men.

"If you ask their manager then he is a very relieved man at the minute as his goalie made three out of four penalty saves in the match, which is quite unbelievable.

"I have told the players not to be down because we have to bounce back as my only concern is the amount of minutes with a game on Tuesday."

Holloway opted not to make a change during the entirety of the second half with Swindon defending with ten men towards the end, and he said he chose to do that as he felt the best players were on the field to see things out.

He said: "I thought that we were going to win it, so I didn't want to disrupt what we were doing there.

"They only equalised with five minutes to go and if I had made a substitution and they had scored then I would have been disappointed as I didn't want to disrupt things when I felt we were going to win.

"I had to make the substitutions in extra time because Grant [Hall] and [Ryan] Delaney as they would be injured now, they couldn't play the extra minutes but I didn't want to take them off when we almost saw the game out."