Oxford United provide the education for Duff’s Swans

The live stream provided by Swans TV for the latest friendly summed up nicely the performance for the Swans tonight.   Stuttering, disjointed and difficult to watch can be applied to both the performance and the quality of the picture on a strange night at our League One opponents.

Andy Fisher’s first half mistake proved to be the moment that decided the match but it should not mean that the blame is solely on the keeper as a strong Swans line up struggled to look anything of substance against Oxford who will have few easier matches this season.

Of course we should not get carried away by a pre-season defeat in itself but tonight proved that there is much work to do ahead of the new season which is just two short weeks away.   The highs of the behind closed doors friendly wins were replaced by some worrying signs in front of the supporters but we know that these games are as much about time on the pitch as opposed to the result.

“There is still, obviously, work that needs to be done,” said Michael Duff after the game.

“The three chances we gave them during the first half were down to us giving the ball away in poor areas of the pitch.

“The chance they had in the second half was down to us taking a risky throw-in in our own third, so we need to eradicate that and the goal we conceded was down to an error from us.

“I thought they took the information on much better in the second half, in terms of the aggressiveness of our press.

“We spent most of the second half in their half, we did not allow them to play like we did at times in the first half.

“It’s down to learning. We are trying to implement new things. We can be a bit cleaner with the ball, I thought we were sloppy at times in possession, which I hope is not going to be like us as the one thing we can do is pass the ball.

“But this is about minutes, and being asked some questions we had not faced so far in pre-season. That’s good because it is something to work on.”