Planet Swans ArchivesGylfi Sigurdsson’s late penalty was nothing more than a consolation even if it was our first goal in four games as we were overrun by a good Southampton side who proved that they are far away from a crisis.
After the euphoria of the opening few weeks of the season it is now a concerning loss of form for the Swans who never really threatened the Saints goal despite having at times the Lions share of possession.
Garry Monk was quick to point out in the build up to the game that we are not in a crisis and I am not sure that we are but we certainly have some things that need to be worked on in the week and next weekend’s game against Tottenham is certainly something that we need to get something out before heads start to drop.
One more defeat would be one point from twelve in the league in this period between international breaks and something that we would have to think about for the near enough two weeks that the squad is apart.
Garry made changes at the start of the game bringing in Ki for Montero as he returned to the diamond formation but by half time he had changed it by taking off the ineffective Gomis as well as Cork and throwing on the equally ineffective Eder and Jefferson Montero who is another one not displaying the form of the early weeks of the season.
When you take a look at the match stats they show 58% possession and 11 shots at goal for us but there was never really a serious save for the home goalkeeper to make and for all the space we created in the first half we never really looked at all like breaking our recent goal duck.
Too many players don’t just look out of form but some of them look as if confidence has dropped at all and whilst the possession is good the crisp passing of the first few games of the season has long since passed.
Van Dijk was given a free header for the first, Tadic got a lucky deflection for the second which effectively ended the game and a quick break saw Mane score the third after the ball was deflected too him off Ashley Williams.
Southampton always looked dangerous and always likely to score more but thankfully for us it never happened and the penalty was a small consolation after a foul on Neil Taylor in the box.
As we slip into the bottom half of the table I would hope that Monk demands much more from his team during the course of the week but with an in form Spurs next up nothing is going to get easier and on current form it is difficult to see us getting anything out of the game.
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