Phil Sumbler
Swansea City’s Carabao Cup campaign is over for another season after they exited the competition with little more than a whimper at the Swansea.com Stadium on yet another night of passing and possession without purpose.
On a day when the Swans unveiled a seventh signing of the summer – goalkeeper Jon McLaughlin joining on a short term deal – it was last week’s two signings who got a first run out for the team with Nelson Abbey and Florian Bianchini both named in the starting line-up as Luke Williams kept good to his word of making changes for the fixture.
Also in the starting line up were Kyle Naughton, Nathan Tjoe-A-On, Kristian Pedersen, Zan Vipotnik, Jay Fulton and Azeem Abdulai making a total of eight changes from the side that started the South Wales derby on Sunday. When you factor that in it was just Eom, Grimes and Vigouroux who retained their places amidst all the changes.
If he wanted the players he bought in to have an impact then Williams was to be bitterly disappointed in a first half that yielded 71% possession, 337 passes but ultimately just a single shot at goal against a side who play a division below us. All too often it was a misplaced pass that broke down a move or a typical midfield performance that we have grown used to when Grimes and Fulton are selected in the same squad. A half time statistic of just five touches for Vipotnik tells you all you need to know about a first half performance.
And it was a first half performance that got worse five minutes before the lead when Wycombe took what was a deserved lead when they fired home past Vigouroux after what had become a shaky first half for a Swans defence that looked every bit the defence that had not played together as a unit before.
One of the criticisms thrown at Luke Williams on Sunday was the fact that his substitutions were the wrong ones at the wrong time and cost the Swans so it was always going to be interesting to see how this panned out in the second half as surely he was going to demand a performance from his players.
The half started slightly more positively for the Swans with more forward play and in particular there was more movement on the right hand side of the pitch bringing Bianchini into the game where he had been largely a passenger in the first half – certainly after the first ten minutes anyway.
The test of the substitutions came just before the hour mark when Swansea made a triple change bringing on Tymon, Cabango and Ronald at the expense of Tjoe-A-On, Abbey and Eom in a bid to change that. If the triple change was one thing, Wycombe at the same time made four changes turning this into almost the feel of a pre-season friendly rather than a competitive cup tie. Questions will be asked as to why make two defensive changes when a goal down although given the fact that Tjoe-A-On had flattered to deceive you can certainly understand the need to make that change to add something more attacking to our line up.
The Swans were more on the front foot than they had been all game but increased possession was equally as ineffective as it was in the second half and as we went into the last quarter of the game we still should not lose sight of the fact that we still, at this stage, had achieved just one shot on target to that point. The performance was as far away from the Luke Williams suggestions of high press, high tempo games as you could get with pedestrian being a more apt word.
With eighteen minutes to go it was the introduction of Liam Cullen and Joe Allen that Luke Williams turned to to try and get a goal out of the game with Naughton and Fulton withdrawn in a bid to make that difference and keep alive the Swans hopes of progression in a competition that we won in 2013.
The bright spot of the game was turning into Bianchini who was prepared to not just run at the Wycombe defence but look to put a cross in when he had the ball and whilst the end product was not always what he would have wanted to be it at least was a fresh approach from a side that has a backward pass as its default setting.
The Swans were looing to get forward but the Wycombe defence will rarely have an easier evening this season then the one they had tonight given that we looked a team that was devoid of ideas and, potentially more worryingly, we looked like a team that was lacking in fitness. Let’s put that into perspective this was just our fifth game of the season, if we are unfit now I dread to think what we may look like in December.
The Swans could – and probably should – have done better from a Matt Grimes free kick with just a few minutes remaining. The ball was crossed into the area and a header back fell to Joe Allen but the midfielder never looked like he was confident going for the ball and he shinned it over the bar in a move that just about summed up the ineffectiveness of the Swans evening.
The signal of three minutes stoppage time may as well have been three hours and it would have made no difference as the inept performance played out in a flurry of pointless passes without purpose. A second half at home against League One opposition was summed up with us managing a pathetic two shots on goal – both of them off target. If we felt the first half was poor, the second half was even worse. It’s now difficult to know if it is players who are simply off form or is it more of a case of just players who are not good enough to do the jobs that they are earmarked to do.
In the end it was a game that will give Luke Williams far more questions then it did answers and the sounds of the grumblings of discontent from the crowd at the end of the game said it all.
MATCH FACTS AND LINE UPS
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