Rob Davies
Russell Martin says his Swansea City team are still a work in progress as he prepares his squad to take on Blackpool after a winless start.
Martin says his team need to show “more risk and aggressiveness in the final third” in a bid to secure the first win of the season after defeats against Blackburn and Oxford and a draw at Rotherham on the opening day.
“We’re still a work in progress,” he told the Official Site.
“We have to give the supporters more energy, more risk and aggressiveness in the final third.
“Blackburn was a big reminder of certain things we need to bring in every game.”
A slight concern would be Martin’s next comments as he talks about the players’ desperation to do well as they are “so keen to prove to people that they can do things in a certain way.”
Surely that would be to the manager himself?
“We have a group of players who are desperate to do well and sometimes that desperation doesn’t help them, because they’re so keen to prove to people that they can do things in a certain way.
“We open ourselves up to criticism when we play this way and we don’t want to be slow, predictable, and play in our own half.
“Teams work so hard on stopping you and work so hard out of possession that we need to continue to work even harder than ever to be successful.
“Everyone here is all in with what we’re trying to do. We’ve worked so hard for a year now to try and be brilliant at something, it’s just key moments letting us down at the moment.
“We’ll continue to work hard. We love being here – the players and staff are incredible.”
There’s also no mention of the defensive side of the game and whilst taking risk is important it’s also relevant to say that the team has conceded 6 goals in 3 games. That also takes it to 21 goals let in from 9 games dating back to last season.
The last time the Swans won was against Derby on the 9th of April.
I don’t understand this whole narrative about Martin not accepting responsibility. It’s a lot more crass on Wales Online, to be fair, but I don’t want to participate in the debate on there as the tone is what it is. Martin took the blame for the substitutions against Oxford, albeit belatedly. He admits that his style is difficult to get right. And he’s the first to congratulate the players (bravery, bravery, bravery) when they win. Some fan writers seem to think that Martin can’t criticise the players at all, since his style is wrong. As if everything that works is down to the players and everything that doesn’t is down to Martin. Kyle Naughton’s interview yesterday shows you how the players feel about the style. And a belief that they will get it right eventually. If only more fan writers would feel the same way.
And the argument that the current squad has a lot more to offer than this style is getting out of them… I just don’t buy it. The style is what makes Paterson, Grimes and Naughton different class when it clicks. I don’t see any of them getting a game at Watford. I believe Martin’s right when he argues that the club has to “do things differently” to get promoted.
I think you’d see Cabango, Piroe, Obafemi, Ntcham to name a few seeing game time at Watford for example.
Martin very rarely takes the blame also.
The problem is that the defence is chaotic, they can’t move the ball out of defence, and the reason they can’t do it is because Martin insists that they do it on the floor with short passes. Any manager who didn’t know how to stop that before the Euros final got a demonstration class from the Italians on how it is done.
Any player playing in front of a defence who have been told that they must play in a way that guarantees they will regularly lose the ball in front of goal is going to struggle.
Martin needs to upgrade his tactical ideas from 2010, everyone else has.