Rob Davies
Russell Martin pointed to a key difference between his team and a top team as the last twenty five minutes perfectly demonstrated a trait we’ve seen all season from this Swansea team – incredible inconsistency.
The Swans were in absolute cruise control at 4-1 after going down to an early Lucas Joao penalty but three second half strikes stunned Martin’s men to go home with just a point from a seemingly unassailable position.
Unfortunately as we’ve seen many times this season Swansea were the masters of their own downfall thanks to kamikaze defending and naive goalkeeping – a lesson which the manager says will be learned ahead of next season.
In the cold light of day the result extends our unbeaten run to seven matches but it was a painful last quarter of the game and one that will take a while to forget.
Martin told the Official Site: “It’s really disappointing.
“I loved us for 65 minutes. Some of the stuff in the first-half was incredible. We were up against a team fighting for their lives and they had one shot on target in the first-half which was the penalty, which, having looked back, I’m pretty convinced was not a penalty.
“The way we responded was superb. The goals we scored are fantastic, but the goals they scored are terrible from our point of view. They are really bad.
“For 65 minutes, I’m proud of them for what they produced. For 25 minutes, we allowed the game to become like that. We’re playing against a team who are fighting for their lives and were willing to gamble a bit more.
“We allowed the game to become a stereotypical Championship game really, and we aren’t very good at that. We’re not set-up to do that.
“If you allow the game to turn into that then you have to be willing to fight and defend the box properly. We didn’t.
“We had unbelievable chances to score another and put it bed, we hit the bar and the post. The game should be dead. So, I’m disappointed.
“We switch off for the second goal. We don’t run as hard as we should. The third goal, again, we don’t run as hard as we should. We don’t pay attention to the detail as much as we did.
“Then, for the fourth goal, their biggest guy in the box is not marked, and the guy coming in has time to chest it and hit it home. The quality of goals we conceded is so disappointing.
“I’m really frustrated for the fans. They were unbelievable.
“But we are seven unbeaten. I’m not going to be overly emotional, but the mentality wasn’t quite right in the last half an hour.
“As a group of young men on the whole, they’ll definitely learn from that.
“I just think it’s another day of learning for us and another day of frustration because, over this weekend, another goal for us in each game and two wins.
“Whenever we’ve been close this season, we haven’t had quite had enough, and that’s probably the sign of where we are.
“We are a team that’s learning so much all the time, a group of young men that will improve from today. But if we’re a really top team, there would have been no comeback for Reading at 4-1.”
A top flight manager would made substitutions to close the game.