Dreadful – Williams sums up Swans performance but all must shoulder the blame

We have written on these pages before that the Swansea City side of 2024/25 are consistently inconsistent and that was highlighted yesterday as we slipped to a poor defeat at Hull – giving the Tigers a first win in fourteen games that allowed them to move out of the relegation zone in the process.

The Swans were second best all game against their side who simply wanted it more ad because of that they put in an effort, passion and desire that was lacking in everyone wearing the Swansea City shirt yesterday.   Luke Williams said after the game that he had hoped to see a reaction from the squad after the defeat to Sunderland but then admitted that “we are not there yet as a group” which should ring more alarm bells than it does silence given the nature of the game and the challenge that we often fall up short against.

We can look back all we want about how we pushed some of the top sides in the division close but the reality is that means nothing when we surrender so pathetically against someone like Hull City.   Defeat at somewhere like the MKM Stadium is by no means an embarrassment but the nature of the defeat most certainly is.   Watching the players surrender so meekly in midfield and lacking leadership both on and off the pitch is something that no football supporters take lying down ad yesterday will be no different.

Every time the management and players take the plaudits they have to be prepared to to take the criticism that follows a defeat.   Luke Williams though seems to be falling into a pattern that his former mentor Russell Martin occupied often in that defeat is down to the lack of understanding of the players but a win is down to his coaching prowess.   Which is fine bar the simple fact that it does not work like that.  On any level.

As much as it was the players who served up the total rubbish we watched yesterday it is the management team who have to shoulder the blame for the level of the performance and if the demand was that we got a performance yesterday then they have to question why this instruction was so widely ignored.  Assuming it was.

“I thought it was a dreadful performance and a result that matched it for us,” Williams said after the game.

“I couldn’t tell you why we played like this, but we were certainly very, very poor.  In fairness, I didn’t even celebrate our goal as, from a performance point of view, it was not good enough.

“I was hoping there would be a reaction, but I don’t think we’re in that place as a group just yet.  They were better than us. We played well against Sunderland for 45 minutes and then we were dreadful.”

Harsh but true words from the Swansea City boss but as a manager he is judged by these kind of performances and we see as many poor performances as we do good ones from this side.   A side that now has almost twelve months of Luke Williams stewardship.

QPR arrive in SA1 on Thursday, Luton on Sunday and neither game should be counted as guaranteed wins but both should definitely be highlighted as games that we are more than capable of winning.   But it will take a massive step up in performance levels so get those results and without them the pressure on the Swans boss will surely start to intensify.

We need to remember that we are under a new ownership group at the club and with new owners come their own new expectations.  Those expectations will be – as a minimum – an expectation that the side competes on the pitch even if we have disadvantages off it.   Yesterday we fell short of that expectation and that won’t be something that will end up being tolerated too often.

“It’s frustrating. We have wasted a 90 minutes of football we are never going to get back and there’s nothing we can do about that now.

“When we got the equaliser of course I hoped we would be able to kick on from there.

“But I felt that unless there was a significant change in the second half then I did not see us winning the game.

“We have given ourselves a terrible start to the Christmas period and we have got a home game coming up where we will have to do a lot better than that, and we will do.”

That last statement Luke is spot on but it is down to you to make sure that happens – that is why you are the manager.