Ian Holloway said that he feels that he needs to bring in “mental training sessions” to bring the Swindon Town squad up to speed.

Having been Town boss for a month, Holloway said that he has seen signs in the team that they need help with team spirit and mentality.

He said: “You have got to get the balance right. You have to have a physical training session but where is the mental training session? We haven’t had any.

“I always have them. I always do different things; maybe they didn’t have time before, maybe they had too much to teach but my balance will look at the mental side as well.

“Do you know the biggest difference between the worst player in the world and the best player in the world? Mental capacity. Why do people win and why do people lose?

“‘Mentality monsters’ – that was what Jurgen Klopp called his team because he had never seen a team like it, well, we need to grow a bit of that and we need to work on that.

“That is about a real team spirit and caring about each other and I am asking questions about things like that and I don’t like the answers that I have gotten.”

Holloway said that in the past he has used lots of military techniques to help bring his squad together and thinks something similar will be necessary at Swindon.

He said: “It is lots of different types of things and I have always tried to train a group of men to think as one and that is an acquired skill from the forces.

“I have used a lot of army and navy facilities and some of their training programmes to mentally train someone.

“It can be brutal where they break you down to a breaking point and bring you back but it also helps you find leaders and lets you know more about yourself in a team situation.

“When you are carrying this full bodyweight dummy and there are eight of you and you have to carry it for a certain amount of miles and you can’t fit all eight on there and two have to run by the side and you have to coordinate it whilst you race another eight people.

“I took them on an SAS course one with the commandos down in Plymouth; it is amazing what you can learn from people whose lives depend on realising that you are not on your own.

“That is a pre-season thing but I might have to do it now and there are other things you can do, like when I was at QPR and brought in a fella from America to talk about how you can develop mental strength even during the worst time of your life.

“It is not ideal to have to do all of this now but it is something you can have quick results from and we need to because there are moments when I have looked out and they look bereft.”