When Swindon take on Rotherham United this weekend, they will be doing it without 11 senior players, of whom at least six would likely have started the game had they been available to Holloway.

This week has seen a move to change this, with Town advertising for two physiotherapists as part of an expansion of the medical team.

Aristotelis Pavlidis, Lead First Team Physiotherapist, has decided to leave the club after only four months, having arrived in June from the Portsmouth academy.

When asked about the reasons for this, Holloway had the slightly terse response: “It's not my department, is it? I'm just dealing with players. Everybody makes their own choice. And if Aris feels that way, you'll be better off speaking to him, not me.”

As part of this pursuit of finding a solution to the injury issues, during which Holloway has “rung everybody I know”, Town have altered the way that they train.

Dan Butler said a few weeks ago that the key to staying injury-free was to “train aggressively” to build up the physical resilience that means matches are not unnaturally strenuous.

Holloway appears to have listened to this suggestion, as he spoke about how he had changed training to improve matters.

He said: “No one does well if they're not enjoying themselves. We have made sure the training is so enjoyable that it’s a joke.

“And we have also made it so hard that it's a joke, and we've given up on worrying about whether anyone gets injured. If they do, that's bad luck.

“We're just going to make it as hard as we possibly can, and they're enjoying that. We're making it as competitive as we possibly can.

“They're enjoying that because there's nothing more a footballer wants than being competitive, and we're turning things on an afternoon into being competitive.

“We are giving them problems to solve as a group, giving them situations that they need to communicate and they need to solve things.”

Holloway believes that making the players think more in training will help them in games when they have to make decisions and solve problems for themselves.

This has also been carried over into the work that is being done with a sports psychologist to help bond the players as a group.

Holloway said: “This is what Claire is doing and, honestly, it's a joy to be around.

“You can feel the difference because they're finding ways; they're having to get people out of themselves to understand each other and actually have an input in whatever you're doing.

“That's what you need, and it's about controlling that and making sure that they can control that out there.

“They're going to get things wrong, but I don't see us folding because in recent weeks it looked like we could have done, and we haven’t. I didn't see that.”