A New Year and a bumper crowd at the Vetch meant nothing to any Swansea fan come 5pm today as they were beaten by the better side and with the evidence presented to us, you would take the assumption that Swansea are laying for third place at best.
After a great Christmas run that had seen the Swans take maximum points in their last three fixtures, scoring 12 goals in the process, there was rightful optimism around the ground and the doors to the North Bank were shut just after 2pm,with the West Terrace full to overflowing by 2.20pm.
After the blow of losing Marc Goodfellow back to Bristol City it was Andy Robinson who took his place on the left hand side of midfield as expected in an otherwise unchanged line up
Gueret
Ricketts Iriekpen Austin Anderson
Forbes Martinez Tate Robinson
Trundle Connor
Subs: Murphy, Maylet, Britton, Jones, Nugent
A pretty uninspiring first half saw the Swans playing into a very strong wind that at times rendered Willy unable to kick the ball more than 20 yards into the face of it. Yeovil though were not taking advantage of this despite having the better of possession in what was to be a sign of things to come.
Swansea’s midfield took it’s customary deep position meaning that we were unable to break through the Yeovil defence who kept many men behind the ball. However, until we learn that he central midfield pairing can move more than five yards from their defensive colleagues we will see more and more of this and you wondered at times whether we had come to the game looking for a point such was our negativity.
Couple that with an inability to pass the ball to our own men – Martinez being very guilty of this and the frequency of his ‘hospital passes’ was becoming a frustration for everyone wanting the team in black and white to win
Up front, we lacked any penetration and quit why the persistence in high balls to Connor in a swirling wind is a complete mystery to me. On the flanks we offered nothing of any real danger bar a Forbes run.
All that aside, Swansea probably came the closest to opening the scoring during the first half with Trundle going very close on two occasions and Andy Robinson firing a free kick straight into the wall.
The second half saw the tempo of the game upped by both sides and it became more and more likely that there would be a goal somewhere to separate the two sides.
Swansea were the more dangerous during the first fifteen minutes but really unable to break down a well organised and disciplined Yeovil side. Trundle struck the outside of the woodwork and Tate saw a long range effort tipped over as the crowd started to get behind the Swans looking for the goal that would lift them above their opponents.
A clearly unhappy Adrian Forbes was substituted for Leon Britton on the hour mark and with it Swansea seemed to lose any shape that they had. On reflection, the decision to remove Forbes could have been said was the wrong one but hindsight is something that it is very easy to have.
Swansea’s back four seemed to become a back six for the last half hour of the game as they once again went into defend too deep mode and offered nothing more than scraps for either Trundle or Connor up front.
Yeovil were growing in confidence and it did start to look as if it was only a matter of time before they sent their support home happy. That moment came with just twelve minutes left on the clock. Stolcers was the scorer as he bent a superb shot from the edge of the area over Willy and into the top far corner to give Yeovil the lead. The hands on heads said it all from the Swans players – a game that they really wanted to win had slipped away from them – some of it through their own mistakes.
Was there to be a way back? The simple answer as we know now is no there wasn’t. Yeovil played plenty behind the ball – evidenced from a corner that saw Willy on the halfway line as the only person not attacking the corner.
However, when there is pushing forward and you get a quick side like Yeovil there could always be a problem and from a move where they seemed happy to just kill time, they beat our defence and with their forwards queuing up it was the division’s top scorer in Jevons who hammered it into the top corner to put 2 goals between the two sides and very probably deservedly so.
Swansea were beaten on a day when nothing happened for them. Goodfellow may have had his critics when he was here but he did bring a balance to the side that was very evidently missing today. Andy Robinson is, and always will be a left sided midfielder at best – a left winger he i not and I cannot see that he ever will be. The pairing of Tate and Martinez in the middle makes us too defensive in terms of what we are doing and good sides can exploit that to their advantage. Robinson’s place is in place of one of these two and if it costs to bring a left winger in then is the question not ‘can we afford to’ but ‘can we afford not to?’
On the evidence of today it is hard to see that we will finish above Yeovil come next May and based on the comments of those that went to Scunthorpe, we won’t finish above them either. Third place will do, but we still have work to do.