Mark Bonner was pleased to get minutes into his Cambridge squad as they progressed in the Carabao Cup with a first-round penalty shootout win over Swindon.
The U’s progressed on penalties after a goalless draw with Swindon, with keeper Dimi Mitov saving two of the Robins’ spot kicks.
Bonner said: “There were two targets for us tonight. One, try and progress and two, with the team selection, get some game time for others on the pitch. It was almost a mop-up game from pre-season; those that had fallen behind and not had games really needed them.
“If you’re going to need your whole squad then when they come into it they need to be ready.
“The consequence of the game is you put a team on the pitch that has never played together. It can look a bit like that at times, but we’ve managed to do the main thing which is get through, and relatively unscathed from it as well.
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“Hopefully that’ll serve us well over the next month, but certainly over the next seven days with three tough games coming up.”
Swindon head coach Ben Garner was very positive with his side’s performance despite the shootout defeat.
He said: “I couldn’t ask any more of them, they’ve given absolutely everything tonight. We were in excess of 6 per cent possession, got in some great positions, just ran out of legs a little bit at times in the final third, but that’s where we are at the moment.
“I think it shows that we’ve got some young players who are knocking on the door to break into the team, we’ve got a little bit of depth there now.
“Some of the play was excellent, some of the times we broke their lines, we just didn’t get that final pass right tonight. We’ll keep working on that and that will come.
“There weren’t many clear cut chances I did think we shaded it with what we did have.”
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