Forget the excuses, learn from the mistakes

It was a strange one yesterday tuning into a couple of sites where the headlines of “Swansea ace blasts side” and “we only have ourselves to blame” were key reactions to Matt Grimes’ post match interview after the poor display on Saturday against Luton Town at the Liberty.

Neither of the headlines could be disputed as the Swans were just not good enough for the day and they echoed the words of the manager after the game who admitted that his side was not at the races.   Few could argue that the win for Luton was just what they deserved from a game that they seemingly always looked on top in but we have been here before this season and yet we continue to make the same mistakes.

Time and time again this season – and even more so at the Liberty – we have seen the side play a game with a lack of tempo, a lack of urgency and – most worryingly – a lack of passion and skill.  All of them key attributes for a side that seemed to harbour at least the ambition of a play off spot even if that never played it’s way through onto the pitch itself.

And after each of those performances the usual comments were heard of “not good enough” or “we need to improve that next time” or “We will look to bounce back” – they are tried and tested excuses but largely not excuses that seem to materialise themselves into results.

As Swansea fans none of us expect to win every game and it was certainly naive to believe on Saturday that Luton would be easy pushovers because they are bottom of the league.  Even more so at the moment due to a three month break meaning that form in March is nowhere near an indication for form in June so league positions mean nothing around current form.

That said, as Swansea fans what we are entitled to expect is a level of performance from a team that is well paid for what they do, a point made many times over the period of lockdown as clubs face financial disasters due to a heavy loss of income.

“We were way off it,” said Swans captain Grimes.. “We can’t expect to play like that and win a game of football. It was all our own making; we were nowhere near good enough.

“To perform as well as we did last week and win 3-0, then go and do that today is not good at all.

“It was a slow start. When you don’t win, you must try to make sure you don’t lose. To give away a sloppy goal like that was not good, but the whole day was poor from start to finish. We’ll look at ourselves and try to bounce back.”

It is difficult to argue with any of those words but a stark reminder should be that we cannot ‘bounce back’ against Millwall on Tuesday and then throw it all away in the following game, consistency is key otherwise the question will always be is the real Swansea City the side that won at Middlesbrough or the side that lost at home to Luton.