Southampton 1 Swansea 0 – Not Good Enough

It kind of goes against the grain to be overly critical of a team at this level but there are so many glaring holes in the set up at the moment that relegation is probably a more real threat this season then it has been for any season since we first arrived in this division in 2011.

Half the number of shots at goal and half the number of shots on target do not tell half the story as the Swans lacked the guile to ever really look like we were going to trouble the scorers whilst Southampton – for me anyway – wasted a host of real good chances where they could have put much more daylight between the two teams.

Our midfield looks lacking any fight at all which will always be a problem at this level and our inability to put together the series of passes that we have become known for and the truth will always be there that in five league games so far this season our goalscoring threat has looked minimal in each and every one of them.

When that part happens then you want people in the side that you know will take the chances when they come our way but the reality is it does not look as if we have that at the moment. Three goals from Leroy Fer and a Gylfi Sigurdsson penalty is all we have to show from those five games which just adds to the worry.

Defensively we look shaky every time a team comes at us with pace or gets the set piece that we have always had a problem with.

And I am not sure we have a set formation at the moment – or even a favourite one – lining up with one winger will generally have problems and we never seem to show any urgency until we go a goal behind and even then the urgency seems to lack any kind of threat for the opposition.

It would be really difficult to pick out any positives from today other than our goal difference did not take the hammering that the performance deserved and with Manchester City (twice), Liverpool and Arsenal to come in the next four games then you have to wonder whether that is just a temporary blip which will look much worse in a few weeks time.

Some things have to change now because we are paying the price for some pretty shocking transfer decisions of the past and whilst working within our budgets is key, doing things on the cheap is not something that we should have done and it could cost us much more than it saved us.

I would love to say put today to bed and move on but what comes next worries me even more.

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