Gavin Gunning hopes overdue win can ‘flip’ Swindon’s season

Posted Wednesday, February 28, 2024 by PA

Gavin Gunning hopes Swindon’s 3-1 victory over Tranmere will help to change his side’s momentum.

Rushian Hepburn-Murphy’s double to end the Robins’ five-match winless run.

Gunning said: “It was a massive three points, it is always going to be massive for a team in our position who have not had the most fantastic of runs, which has been long ongoing, unfortunately.

“Hopefully this can flip us around – we have won one game, we are not knocking on the play-offs or going to win the league or anything but we are going in the right direction.

“It is a positive thing and the game management was good at the end, Rushian was struggling and we were having to play with 10.

“They had a few openings at the end and they overhit a few crosses, but other than that I don’t think they had a chance.”

Following an opening 20 minutes desperately low on quality, Sean McGurk added some. He got the ball in the box, sold the defender with a dummy and then stuck his shot beyond Luke McGee.

Tranmere did not need long to respond as a block fell to Rob Apter on the edge of the area and he drilled an effort first time into the bottom corner.

Swindon took their lead back as Udoka Godwin-Malife threaded a pass through the defence from inside his own half and Hepburn-Murphy exploded onto it, rounded the goalkeeper and tucked home the finish.

The 25-year-old had his second after the break when he galloped beyond the defence and a fine ball through and tucked his shot beyond the goalkeeper.

Nigel Adkins remained philosophical about his side’s performance and the lessons his side would learn despite their defeat.

He said: “We started very brightly and were very good.

“We responded well to their goal, got ours and had a couple of other good chances. We had some good spells. At times we had a lot of the ball and created some good situations.

“We were probably too open for their second goal and the third was good counter-attacking football, but there were two exceptional passes they played for those goals.

“For some of the young players, it was a good opportunity and it was a good one for me to utilise the squad. I’ll watch the game back in the cold light of day to see what we can learn from it.

“We’re constantly learning. We’ve proved we can do it, so we now have to go and show it on a consistent basis.”