Swindon Town face a waiting game in their bid to bring in new recruits ahead of Saturday's showdown with promotion rivals Port Vale.

Ben Garner's squad has been stripped of loan stars Kaine Kesler-Hayden, who was recalled by Aston Villa, and Alex Gilbert, who has returned to Brentford.

They suffered a 3-2 defeat at Mansfield Town on Tuesday night and are preparing for another test of their credentials in a sixth-versus-fifth clash at Vale Park.

“I’m not sure if we’ll get anything in by the weekend, it’s all still ongoing,” Garner told BBC Radio Wiltshire in the wake of the midweek loss.

“It will just be a case of seeing how that goes as the week progresses.”

The club was placed under a transfer embargo at the start of the season after failing to comply with five EFL regulations.

This meant Town are not able to pay a transfer fee for any players they are looking to bring in and can only gain reinforcements who aren’t already registered to another club, or through loans. 

“We’re looking at several positions that we want to strengthen, we’re looking to get that done as soon as possible,” said Garner

“But it’s not an easy window, It’s not an easy window when you’re under an embargo as well so we’ll just keep working away at that and as soon as we can get the players in that we want, we will do.”

Town have made two signings already during the January transfer window, with the addition of 23-year-old back-up keeper Emmanuel Idem – formerly of Derby County – on a free transfer and centre-half Jake O’Brien on loan from Crystal Palace. 

The latter made his debut for Town at Mansfield.

Garner said: “We needed to make the change with Kaine going back to Aston Villa, so we moved Rob Hunt up one position into there and felt it was an opportunity for Jake to go in. 

“Tough game, tough game for him to start with. 

"I thought he grew as the game went, thought he got better as the game went on and overall it was a decent debut for him.”