Rob Davies
Russell Martin was happy with some elements of the first sixty minutes despite going three nil down but made sure to address the disappointments as his team drew 3-3 at Coventry.
The Swans boss admits he didn’t know where the weaknesses came from – mentality being a big concern – which saw his team opened up time and time again before the substitutions pulled the game back from the jaws of defeat.
He was particularly angry with Jonathan Panzo’s goal – a one time target for Swansea under Steve Cooper – with the players given so much detail by set piece coach Andy Parslow.
Ultimately it’s a point on the road and Martin believes that his players will learn plenty from the experience gained from the comeback at the CBS Arena.
Goals from Joel Piroe, Jay Fulton and Liam Cullen moved the Swans up to 10th although a number of sides below them still have a game to play.
Martin said: “I don’t know how to feel about it really. For half an hour, we were incredible.
“I’m really grateful and proud for the last half an hour, but I’m really hurt by the first 60 minutes. It’s going to sound crazy, but, with the ball, the performance in the build-up, the lads, Steven [Benda], Grimesy [Matt Grimes], Jay at times, they did some incredible things, we got out and out, the build-up was so clean.
“We got to the final third and it just ended up on the counter attack. The energy at the top end of the pitch, the willingness to run, to sacrifice yourself, the reaction to losing the ball, all stuff we’ve worked on in the last couple of weeks was nowhere near acceptable.
“The lack of physical contact, lack of aggression in transition is why they came away with so many counter attacks. It’s something we worked on and spoke about.
“To then concede from a set-piece is a disgrace with how we’ve been at them recently. We’ve gone behind in too many of the last seven games and when I sit there and look at the work Andy [Parslow] does, the detail he goes into with the players, how much we focus on them, because before today we’d given away the least shots against in the league on average, today I think we end up with 17 shots each.
“That’s mentality. They have all of the detail in the world and the guy (Panzo) gets a free header and scores when the game had actually settled down. That’s unacceptable.
“I saw some stuff in the first half I did not like one bit. I’ve told the players that. Passes that are not helping your team-mate, it’s not hurting the opposition. I don’t know where it came from.
“Then we concede two crazy goals. The third goal, I just really didn’t like the reaction.
“For 60 minutes I was so happy with the build-up, but nowhere near happy enough with the final third, nowhere near happy enough with the reaction to losing the ball, recovery runs to our own goal, nowhere near happy enough with the physical contact.
“The thing that hurt me the most was the reaction to disappointment. The arms in the air, looking around at each other. We have a really young group so today will be brilliant for them in the long term, I think.”
