CAPTAIN Jon Ashton says his Stevenage side won’t beat themselves up about two defeats from their opening two league matches this season.

Boro lost 1-0 away to a decent Swindon Town outfit on Saturday a week after losing by the odd goal in seven at home to Oldham Athletic.

Speaking after the weekend defeat to the Robins, Ashton said his side improved as the match went on and the strength in depth, as shown by five new faces on the bench this week compared to last week, can only be good for the club.

“Not getting three points we’re always going to be disappointed, but the first half performance we could have done a lot better.” said the Boro skipper.

“They got into the play-offs last season but we’re still disappointed we didn’t get more out of the game. We take confidence [that] we created a few chances and in the second half we could have won the game I thought. We’ll take that into next week and make sure we take our chances.

“We’re not going to beat ourselves up over it. We’ll work hard midweek; there are a lot of things to work on. The season we got promoted from the Conference we got three points from the first three games. We’ll take confidence from that and I’m sure we’ll get three points next week.”

James Dunne made his first appearance of the season so far on Saturday while there were also places on the bench for Jimmy Smith, following injury, Dani Lopez, back from suspension, Ben Smith, a goalkeeper on non-contract terms, plus new signing Peter Hartley.

Speaking about the depth of squad manager Graham Westley has available to him, Ashton said. “We had [Marcus] Haber on the bench as well, Dani Lopez coming on, it’s a shame that Oumare [Tounkara] hasn’t found himself on the scoresheet yet but I’m sure that he will do.

“I had a chat with the manager about [Hartley] midweek when he signed, and I liked what I heard so I’m hoping that he’ll bring something different from the squad and he’ll kick us on a level.”