Ian Holloway said that he couldn't have asked for anything more from his Swindon Town team despite exiting the Vertu Trophy with a 2-1 defeat to Birmingham City.

Swindon were holding their own for 89 minutes in the match as Ayumu Yokoyama's opener was cancelled out by Harry Smith coming off the bench to head home.

But with seconds remaining and penalties looming large, Alexander Cochrane's corner hit off Smith at the near post and bounced over the line.

Holloway spoke after the game about how proud he was of his players for how they had gone about their performance and run the League One leaders so close.

He said: "I really enjoyed the game and I don't think that it looked like there was such a gulf between our league positions.

"We have got to take that as I think the young lads did us proud and I thought that everybody who played did us proud to get us into a situation to be at 1-1 and looking at a penalty shoot-out.

"To let a goal in like that was very disappointing and the manner of both goals was disappointing but the manner of the performance was exciting and exhilarating considering the changes that I made.

"I couldn't have asked for more, to be perfectly blunt, I hated how the goals went in but we can learn from those and the overall performance against a team like that, I was delighted with.

"I was delighted with our closing and our pressing and our organisation as everything looks like we are going in the right direction.

"I am disappointed but I am not downhearted with our performance tonight."

Birmingham's first goal came from a mix-up at the back to allow Yokoyama through on goal and the second came from a sloppily-defended corner.

Despite so much of the performance being positive for Holloway, he was disappointed with how Town let themselves down with the goals that they conceded in the game.

He said: "I am bitterly disappointed because I think that we deserved an awful lot more than that.

"Well done to them and at the end of the day they won it in both boxes as we showed them we are not a bad team.

"We have to carry that on and build on that but I can't accept, as a team, rolling it back to someone and leaving them on his own. It wasn't his fault as we told them to make angles and we didn't do that.

"To let goals in like that, as a group is not good enough and I will show them how to learn from it but that is not good enough compared to everything else that we did.

"I am taking that performance all day long apart from the two mistakes.

"If this was a league game and we did that then I would be absolutely fuming because that is unacceptable and we have got to do better as we fought really close but it is still disappointing."