Rob Davies
Swansea City return to the Swansea.com Stadium for their first home fixture of the Championship season to take on Blackburn Rovers today.
The Swans ground out a point on the road at Rotherham last weekend thanks to Harry Darling’s spectacular long range goal and missed several opportunities to take all three points.
Michael Obafemi in particular will be desperate to make amends for his horror miss after Joel Piroe’s fine pass last weekend and both will start in a front three with Jamie Paterson.
Team News
The only absentee for the Swans is Joe Allen who is not yet fit to make his long awaited second debut for the club – but he is likely to come into the fold for the trip to Blackpool next weekend.
Otherwise it’s likely to mean an unchanged starting eleven from the draw at Rotherham with Jay Fulton and Matt Grimes starting in the centre of midfield – especially after Russell Martin praised the former last weekend.
The only question mark is whether Ben Cabango earns a recall after regaining full fitness after injury but the question is who would he dislodge?
Nathan Wood did himself no harm on a promising debut and should keep his place and of course Darling scored so could Kyle Naughton drop out or even move to the right side instead of Joel Latibeaudiere? We shall see.
As for the visitors, Sammie Sczmodics is likely to play some part after completing a big money move (well, at least in Championship terms) from Peterborough United in an otherwise fully fit squad.
Rovers won 1-0 against QPR on the opening day to give Jon Dahl Tomasson a debut win as Blackburn boss and he’ll be hoping to make it six points out of six in South Wales.
Predicted line-ups
Swansea (3-4-3):
Fisher
Wood – Naughton – Darling
Latibeaudiere – Fulton – Grimes – Sorinola
Piroe – Obafemi – Paterson
Blackburn (4-2-3-1):
Kaminski
Brittain – Ayala – Wharton – Pickering
Travis – Buckley
Gallagher – Hedges – Brereton
Vale
The Managers’ comments
Russell Martin: “We want to attack every game.
“Every game in this league is very different, and every game is winnable.
“There’ll be strange results. I think the fact that no away team won on Saturday tells you how difficult it is.
“I don’t obsess about home or away form, we obsess about performance. We want our stadium to be a place teams find really difficult to come to and they know before the game what sort of game they’re coming into.”
Jon Dahl Tomasson: “There will be space to hurt them but space to play in when we have the ball.
“It was 50-50 against QPR so we had the ball the same time.
“There were moments when we could have done much better. If you had done it better, we would have won 3-0.
“Those things are important, don’t run too much with the ball because you’re not quicker than the ball.
“We are working on those things. On the ball, I spoke to QPR people and they said the switches of play killed them.”
Planet Swans prediction:
It’s a Blackburn team with real attacking intent and some quality added this summer, not forgetting they have ex Swan Ryan Hedges in the starting line-up.
This will be a statement of intent for the season coming I think and a win would go a long way to lifting the seeming lull over the fanbase at present.
Swansea City 1-0 Blackburn Rovers
