Phil Sumbler
Swansea City failed again in the Championship last night as another dismal showing saw us go eight games without a win in the league after another defensive horror show and missed chances saw us slip another place to 16th in the table.
With 4th placed Watford and leaders Burnley due in SA1 either side of the coming weekend these are not good times for Russell Martin and his side as we gave away two soft goals, leaked a penalty that was put over the bar in a style that Harry Kane knows about before a late Liam Cullen goal gave us hope of another unlikely comeback but in truth it was hope that simply papered over the all too familiar cracks.
All the hallmarks of our current winless run were there for the Sky cameras to see – walking periods of football, massive amounts of possession in areas where it doesn’t matter, defensive lapses and a general style of play that seemingly enjoys giving at least a two goal start to the opposition.
It is little wonder that the current run of results is leading to more and more angst in the support base and a snap poll created on our forum after last night’s match was leaving most in no doubt that the blame is lying firmly at the feet of the manager.
Whether your belief is that a change is needed or not there can be little disagreement when we say that the current level of performances are unacceptable on so many levels. A very distant memory are the winning performances of September and October that coincided with us seeing considerably far less possession but looking much more dangerous on so many levels.
Last night we had 76% possession, completed more than 550 passes but so much of it was short passes in our own half or around the centre circle with Reading allowing us to do what we wanted to at that stage. We can point to missed chances from the likes of Cooper, Piroe and Darling amongst others but the simple fact is we lost to a Reading side who simply aren’t that good.
Steven Benda’s first half punch to the feet of Andy Carroll cost us the first goal as the tall veteran striker scored his customary goal against us. It should have been worse five minutes later but Meite skied his penalty high over the bar after Jay Fulton was penalised for a foul on Carroll.
The insistence of the Swans side to play about with the ball when it simply wasn’t needed was the costly factor in the home sides second goal. Darling and Benda tapped away in our own area before passing to Tom Ince whose shot deflected off Darling for the second goal and the damage was done.
Martin made changes – reality was he had little option – and Cundle, Paterson and Cullen were all sent on to replace pretty much our midfield of Fulton, Cooper and Allen but the reality is none of them made an impact although Cullen did pull the goal back when he tapped in after a Piroe header was tipped onto the post.
We saw Oko-Flex and Naughton as well before the game was out but Martin was shuffling a pack as he likes to do but the style was as slow and cumbersome as we have become customed to expect and the frustrations remain as strong now as they have done for large periods of the Russell Martin reign.
It is difficult to know exactly where we go from here. We look as disjointed as a team now as we have done at any stage since Martin arrived here seventeen months ago. Our football is slow at best and entirely predictable and we have developed an exceptionally annoying habit of seemingly not trying until we are at least one goal down and often more. When we play with a little pace and urgency there is a faint hope that we can do something more inspiring but for the last eight games those moments have happened only when we are chasing a game. And, as we are seeing, we cannot completely rely on getting points from losing positions (14 of our 32 points this season have come from us being behind)
We have players who look either devoid of confidence in either themselves or the style of play we are trying to implement. Joel Piroe is a shadow of the player we saw last season, pretty much all our midfield combinations are mirror images of each other and all of them as equally ineffective it seems.
And our back three looks as if it has a defensive howler in it every time we have the ball – you can generally take your pick as to which player it can be as each is capable of creating a chance for the opposition as was evidenced in the defeat at Reading.
The January window is almost upon us but right now whatever money is available for Russell Martin question marks will be raised as to how it is used. Andy Fisher and Harry Darling have been his “marquee” signings of the last two windows and I’ll just leave you to judge the “success” of them as it’s pretty clear.
Russell Martin now simply has to find a positive result out of one of the next two league games or he is facing a ten match run without a win and that is a run of form that very few managers survive. Process or not.
A massive week looms large now for the Swans and all connected with the club but these are exceptionally concerning times and the worst part is we don’t appear to be learning any mistakes.
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