Swindon Town began their pre-season preparations with a comfortable 4-1 victory over neighbours Swindon Supermarine at The Webbswood Stadium.

After going into the break behind when Harry Williams coolly tucked home, Swindon came back through a great strike from Jake Cain and Jaxon Brown turning in, on top of a brace for Paul Glatzel.

Friendly matches are all about trying to learn small lessons and although the group had only been together for four days prior to their first friendly, there were still plenty of things to take from Saturday’s outing.

Expectations about Mark Kennedy’s style of play were confirmed.

Kennedy and Jamie Russell had been fairly coy about how Swindon would look to set up under the new boss since his arrival but the general structure was evident against Supermarine.

It was rather reminiscent of his Lincoln City side as Town set up in both halves with a 352 system that had both wing-backs hugging the touchline as the rest stayed narrow. Sean McGurk and Paul Glatzel both played off of a target man in Harry Smith and Aaron Drinan in a withdrawn role looking to add the creative spark.

Things struggled to click in an attacking sense before the break with many of the new signings involved but looked far more fluent with players who have pre-existing chemistry after halftime.

The defensive work has the team already looking more well-drilled.

Marcus Bignot spoke after the game about being pleased with the way some of the defensive principles had been deployed already.

Despite conceding in the first half, Swindon immediately looked very well disciplined in how they restricted their Southern League opposition. The hosts found it very difficult to move the ball for much of the game due to the way Town were defending. Ollie Clarke and Anton Dworzak were especially impressive as Swindon allowed the Marine centre-backs to have the ball, but any forward pass triggered a ferocious press.

We are in for an exciting battle for the right wing-back position.

Kennedy said on Thursday that he was very pleased with his wing-back options, as Tunmise Sobowale and Rosaire Longelo have joined the squad.

Two of the standout performers in the friendly were the two right-sided players, Sobowale and Joel McGregor. The academy product was a consistent threat in the first half and could easily have walked away with a pocket full of assists for Smith and McGurk. Sobowale then came on and looked equally dangerous with his powerful running proving too much to handle at times.

Both players are still fairly new to EFL football, so a pecking order is yet to be worked out but this seems to be one of the key battlegrounds for a starting berth come the trip to Chesterfield.

Reinforcements are still needed in attacking areas.

The recruitment work done so far this summer has been largely positive and has addressed many of the defensive needs, although there is still room for another centre-back or two.

However, the main area for improvement needed from Saturday is in adding further creativity. During the first half, the invention centrally had to come almost entirely from McGurk as although Clarke and Dworzak are strong players, neither is at their most comfortable playing a killer pass.

Jake Cain’s introduction at halftime improved matters and his profile is something that Kennedy had at Lincoln but with Ricky Aguiar not involved, he is the only midfielder like that. Glatzel looks ready to be the team’s star and McGurk showed off some of his imagination, but finding more players with that capability seems to be the most pressing part of recruitment.