Rob Davies
There seems to be precious little light at the end of the tunnel for Swansea City and Russell Martin as Middlesbrough made light work of a second half comeback yesterday afternoon to take all three points.
If we are in a tunnel, it’s 25 miles long, cold, wet and no food on offer. And it seems to be getting longer by the game. Indeed the only comfort at the moment is that there’s only 10 games of this horrible season left.
What looked so positive in October has quickly turned into somewhat of a nightmare in March after three wins in twenty two games and a trip to Millwall on Tuesday sure to bring more misery in what is effectively half a season of dire form.
The lack of shock and anger at the result yesterday typifies the mess our club is in from front to back and it’s an extremely worrying time to be a Swansea City fan.
Martin made just a single change buoyed by the relative improvement at Luton – but of course with nothing to show for it – as Grimes returned for the injury stricken Joe Allen.
Benda
Cabango – Wood – Latibeaudiere
Sorinola – Fulton – Grimes – Manning
Cundle – Piroe – Cooper
Middlesbrough, a team in real form since Michael Carrick took over from Chris Wilder, started slowly and it allowed Swansea to get an early foothold of the game.
Indeed the thoughts many in the East Stand had were Swansea in red as Boro passed up presentable opportunities by always looking for an extra pass rather than one of the dangerous front three taking on a shot.
The first goal saw a decent Swans attack ending with Manning on the let’s cross/shot being delicately finished by Piroe to seemingly lift some of the gloom down in SA1. His 14th of the season.
And largely you would say they were good value for the lead at half time although mindful of every single collapse that we’ve seen in recent times, meaning optimism was in short supply.
Fulton tapped home after a shot from Piroe was fumbled although the offside flag rose as Martin’s team started the second half well, with one change in the shape of Ntcham for the injured Cooper.
But as the home team took a corner, over commitment in attack allowed a quick counter attack thanks to a clipped ball by Riley McGree to the onrushing Aaron Ramsey (not that one).
Ramsey took on Grimes and Sorinola and looked to have made a mess of the attack but the ball bounced off the latter and eventually the finish came off the inside of the far post for 1-1.
“That’s it now, they’ll collapse” was the thoughts of many in the East and sure enough that’s exactly what happened. The second phase of a corner was poorly dealt with as an air shot dropped out of the air and wax inexplicably headed home by Cameron Archer.
The loan market is a remarkable thing and both scorers were on loan from Aston Villa; look at the way we’ve utilised loan deals and it’s yet another mess both in terms of recruitment and management.
When you analyse the team at the moment, calamitous would be s good word to describe the defence and no better example of this would be the ridiculous Latibeaudiere challenge on McGree for a spot kick. Which the league’s top scorer Akpom comfortable despatched.
The home return of Jamie Paterson (if this is our saviour then we might as well forfeit) did little to lift moods with the boos probably reflective of the way fans feel towards the club and the player himself.
I can’t quire express how detached I feel from this team and club at the moment and that’s echoed by the majority of the fanbase. No boos at the final whistle yesterday, just indifference. It’s just another Saturday afternoon and another loss.
I’ve repeated for some time my thoughts on the manager himself and his time was up a number of weeks ago. This ship is sinking at the moment and whilst you can’t discount the issues in the background, there’s little doubt that another man would get more out of these players.
The team is broken both in morale and confidence and nothing will change unless we make the change as a club. Will that happen? I don’t know.
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NEXT UP FOR THE SWANS
Excellen article .As i left the ground with my daughter yesterday neither of us were kicking the floor in frustration neither of us moaning at the crazy ,thoughtless challenge for the penalty by Latibeaudiaire – instead we were just fed up that we’d wasted another two hours of our life.
We are becoming indifferent and that is worse for the club than getting angry .We expect to lose and we expectbthe opposition to score in a breakaway when we are attacking.
We expect to see only two defenders waiting for the said breakaway and we expect Martin to ignore what thousands of supporters can see and do nothing about it
If you haven’t got pace inthe team and you sre winning keep three or even four back .As Trundle said it’d be nice to score a second goal but we were winning.
And so on to Millwall on a Tuesday night .Still st least Martin will have to leave Lati out after that penalty. Won’t he?