Phil SumblerOne thing we know throughout the Steve Cooper era at Swansea is that our away form has been better than our home form.ย Cooper’s sides have still only been beaten on the road four times in the league since he arrived in South Wales so we should be confident in thinking we can bounce back from the disappointment of yesterday.
The Huddersfield defeat was typical of so many defeats under Cooper.ย ย Plenty of first half possession is not turned into anything early on, any early tempo is replaced by a negative viewpoint before getting hit by a sucker punch.ย ย We were given a way back into the game with the Ayew penalty but – despite some good chances in the second half – we can probably have no complaints about the defeat with the difference being Huddersfield took the chance where we failed to do so.
Our home form last season was what kept us away from the real push at the top end of the table and we have to hope that this isn’t to be the case this time around.ย It is four points from nine at the Liberty only so far this season yet our two ventures on the road have led to maximum points, something we have to hope continues in the midweek trip to Coventry (in Birmingham) and league leaders Bristol City next weekend.
Cooper will, almost certainly, be looking to make changes in midweek and has his deadline day signings available.ย ย Ryan Manning, Ryan Bennett and ย Joel Latibeaudiere were not able to feature on Saturday whilst Kasey Palmer was a second half substitute.ย It seems certain that Palmer and Bennett will quite probably start against Coventry whilst Manning will be close to the starting line up as well and almost certainly will feature on the bench.
We said going into the international break that the two weeks back will give us a much better idea of our promotion capabilities largely as the transfer window closed before we returned and five games in fourteen days was to be a real test of any squad at this level.
Clearly we should not panic after the defeat to Huddersfield but there were warning signs there that should not be ignored.ย We still lack a natural goal scorer in the squad (something Borini could add?) and we still have that tendency to go missing at times in games but I maintain a view from the early weeks of the season that we will win more than we will lose this season and that will always see us within touching distance of the promotion places.
There are two more things that we should take into account when thinking about whether we can bounce back in midweek.ย The first is that we still only once have lost two league games on the bounce under Cooper (Fulham and West Brom last season) although in fairness we have only once followed a league defeat with a win so smart money goes on a draw on Tuesday night.
The other factor that we should take comfort in at the moment is overall away results in the Championship.ย This weekend alone 8 of the 12 games resulted in an away win (just Brentford won at home) and so far in 60 games played, the home side has triumphed just 19 times.
All that aside though we know that the manager has some thinking to do ahead of Tuesday night’s game and we are almost certainly going to see some Swansea debuts.
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