Phil Sumbler
There will be plenty of question marks over the performance of Luke Williams’ Swansea City this evening as they surrendered the bragging rights in the South Wales derby to Cardiff as the home side ran our comprehensive – and deserved winners.
There is no hiding behind this one that Cardiff simply wanted the result more and they deserved the scoreline that they delivered after another pathetic Swansea performance that saw plenty of possession but ultimately very little from it in a game that was dominated by the Bluebirds from around the half hour mark.
In recent years, the fingers have been pointed by Cardiff fans at their players for the lack of desire to win a game but today there was little doubt that that lack of desire sat within the men in white shirts who simply were not up to the challenge that this fixture demands.
Even in the period where we were on top in the first half hour it was largely, as has become the norm in recent seasons. possession for possession’s sake with every meaningful attack and chance in the first half looking more dangerous when it was coming from those in a blue shirt.
Loose balls in midfield were often seeing us second best and any attack that looked as if it may have an element of danger quickly snuffed out by two ineffective wingers who seemingly have no desire, or is that ability, to take on and beat a man. But then again when the target man in the middle is Liam Cullen you have to question the sanity of the manager who made that selection. Cullen has had an excellent season but he was always going to get little change out of a defence that is built on height and strength.
The Swans were undone, and the game was ended as a contest, in the first five minutes of the second half when Callum Robinson managed to breach our over generous defence twice. First he was able to take advantage of the massive chasm of space that Cabango and Darling left between them to drive a low shot on the turn past Vigouroux. And then minutes later he was gifted the ball by a (very) loose pass from Tymon and a shot, again low, from the edge of the area gave the Swans keeper no chance. The Cardiff City Stadium was on its feet but frankly at this point the Swans were on a completely different part of the body as the heads dropped in realisation that the game was lost and some long hard looks would be cast in their direction.
The introduction of Vipotnik and Bianchini for Allen and Eom was a token gesture by a Swans boss who looked bewildered as Sky flashed a stat that showed us how inept we are in the second half with just nine goals scored in the second half this season prior to this point.
Unfortunately for us though we do now only have one way of playing and even at 2-0 down we seemed more intent on keeping possession rather than chasing a game which – with just a two goal deficit – can change very quickly with a goal no matter how it arrives.
Any hopes of that for us though were extinguished when the home side scored a third from a corner. A good ball into the are (something we could learn much from) was met by the head of Goutas whose header came down off the bar and into the back of the net. This was 3-0 and with 23 minutes to go it was probably a case of damage limitation for the Swans, certainly not what we had hoped for at the start of the encounter. And certainly not what we are used to in a fixture that we have very much dominated in recent seasons.
Josh Key came half close with a header that went close and Darling also had a header that was palmed away but these were token gestures in a performance that was so far short of what we should expect and yet another ninety minutes from a Luke Williams side where we look as ineffective as we can possibly be.
As stated at the start of this report there will be plenty of questions needing to be asked over the basis of this performance and it was stated last week that anything like this could certainly increase the pressure on Luke Williams tenure as Swansea City manager. We simply cannot sit and watch performances where we are not just beaten but we are beaten to a level that we don’t even seem as if we have a passion to compete for the points that there are available.
With the transfer window almost two thirds passed all our “expert” planning that we were told had happened has so far delivered nothing in terms of reinforcements to a squad that simply is not good enough to be anything other than a mid table championship side. There were more than a dozen players on that pitch today wearing white who should take a long hard look at themselves as to their part and desire to play football in SA1.
The game boiled over with a series of handbags in the 89th minute but it was the first time any real passion was shown by the Swans players with the result being a pretty pointless yellow card for both Ralls and Cabango. It signalled the start of five minutes of stoppage time but to be honest it could have been five hours and it would have made no difference to us today such was our inability to have any impact on the game itself.
Omar Riza was sent from the bench in stoppage time due to a confrontation with Goncalo Franco but it was the only blight on a day that simply belonged to Cardiff City.
The Swans will have to put this behind us pretty quickly with tricky fixtures coming up in the next seven days as we welcome Sheffield United to the dot com on Tuesday before heading to Norwich next Saturday lunchtime.
There is no more to say.
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