Ian Holloway said that he was not too disheartened with Swindon Town's display despite them falling to a 1-0 defeat at Bradford City.

In a match that had limited action at both ends, a pair of mistakes from Tunmise Sobowale and Dan Barden gifted Calum Kavanagh the only goal of the game.

Swindon never really got going in an attacking sense and despite keeping Bradford largely quiet, they did not do enough at the other end to feel disappointed with the result.

Holloway said that whilst there was plenty to improve upon, his side showed enough positives for him to be pleased with the game overall.

He said: "It was a bit of a game like that, they didn't make too many clear-cut chances either.

"It is going to be that sometimes where it will feel like a war of attrition and you have to make sure that it is hard to beat you and hard to play against you.

"I think that we did that, other than Tunmise making two mistakes and he didn't mean that when we didn't follow that up and they scored.

"That changed the game and it lifted their crowd, if we could have scored first then things would have been different.

"When you go one down here it wakes the crowd up and I think that the lads did well with that but we didn't force them into enough mistakes in their backline.

"I had my front four but we didn't get wide enough and do bits as well as them defending really well.

"I tried to change it in the second half to get different boys on to be higher and wider but it didn't work and that happens sometimes.

"If that was the second game of the season then I don't think people would be feeling like they feel now and I definitely don't feel that way. I really don't.

"I am not expecting a free-flowing beautiful performance up here; we came here and fought equally with them and they didn't create too much but they went home with all three points because they followed up a loose ball.

"Is that a performance of passion? Yes it is. Was that as good as we want? Not really but we are working at it.

"For me there were shoots of things that are making us harder to beat.

"The energy was exactly what I want but I would like more in the final third."

Holloway was disappointed with the referee's display, especially the decision to show Harry Smith a yellow card in the early stages for a sliding challenge to block a clearance from the goalkeeper.

He said: "If Harry would have blocked that clearance then that could have changed things too.

"But then he has gone and been booked for it, which I think is absolutely ridiculous to be honest with you.

"He has gone in and almost blocked the clearance and it could have gone in the net.

"Apparently that was reckless but it didn't look like that to me."