It’s been a miserable start to the season for Swansea City and today’s loss to Bristol City was quite easily the worst of the lot.<\/p>\n
The manner of the defeat isn’t reflected by the scoreline and indeed had it been a much heavier loss Michael Duff couldn’t have complained.<\/p>\n
It’s early days of course and five games in is certainly not enough to pass sufficient enough judgement on a manager who’s succeeded in both of his previous jobs at Cheltenham and Barnsley.<\/p>\n
But there are early warning signs particularly when he makes such bizarre comments about the upcoming derby game against Cardiff City – something which everyone knows is important to the fans of our club.<\/p>\n
“There’s no getting away from it. It’s an important game. But it’s not the be all and end all. I’d rather win promotion and get beat by Cardiff twice. People might not like that.<\/p>\n
“But we need to go and give a better account of ourselves. We need to show more fight, more spirit, more doggedness.<\/p>\n
“That will give us a chance of getting a result.”<\/p>\n
Perhaps it’s a tactic to take the pressure off the fixture? The fact Duff even recognises that people won’t like that comment says everything…<\/p>\n
We’ve seen so far that he isn’t a people pleaser and that can be refreshing but when you’re talking about a game that means a lot in South West Wales and it has shown by the results we have enjoyed in recent years.<\/p>\n
In reality the essence of what he says is correct – I think most people would gladly take promotion over beating Cardiff City – but when we are as bad as we are at present it seems tone deaf at best.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the Swans boss bemoaned the performance of his players after today’s match in a game where there was little positive to take away going into the international break.<\/p>\n
Duff said: “You can talk about formations and players and managers all this sort of stuff. But if your opponent runs harder than you it’s going to be a difficult afternoon.<\/p>\n
“It’s why you end up retiring from football. I can still kick a ball. I can still head it. But I can’t run anymore, because I’m fat and old<\/p>\n
“It’s disappointing (the result and performance). But there’s new players in the building now. We’ve got a couple of weeks. The season almost starts now.<\/p>\n
“It’s about integrating new players. We’ve got four new players who will give us a better balance and there’s good competition for places now, so people need to put their hands up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s been a miserable start to the season for Swansea City and today’s loss to Bristol City was quite easily the worst of the lot. The manner of the defeat isn’t reflected by the scoreline and indeed had it been a much heavier loss Michael Duff couldn’t have complained. It’s early days of course and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":85274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203,306],"tags":[544,1524,1507],"class_list":["post-85270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","category-reactions","tag-bristol-city","tag-michael-duff","tag-the-2023-24-season"],"yoast_head":"\n