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Swansea 2 Walsall 0 |
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The Swans progressed to the second round of the Carling Cup for the first time in 8 years at the Liberty Stadium thanks to goals from Paul Anderson and Jason Scotland. It’s been eight years coming but in front of a decent sized enough crowd considering the competition the Swans finally progressed into round two with a performance that never echoed the total football of Saturday but was encouraging enough considering the number of changes made from Saturday’s game. A full debut was handed to teenager Joe Allen who was voted – deservedly so – man of the match as well as first competitive starts for Anderson and Bussy with Garry Monk returning from injury. Doris Tatey Monk Kev Painter Britts KOL Allen Anderson Bussy Craney When you get 7000 at the Liberty, what was a big crowd at the Vetch always seems very subdued with little atmosphere generated. The big gaps between the fans don’t help and the gaping closed stand behind the goals (bar the 100 Walsall fans) will never create much in the way of acoustics. That will be different when we close in on 20,000 for Saturday but that’s the nature of the beast. Swansea were, in truth, the better side from start to finish and bar an emergency in the first half when we presented Mooney with a one on one on the plate thanks to a poor back pass we were never really under major pressure. Doris dealt with that comfortably enough and that was the evening’s major problem out of the way as Austin, and to a greater extent Monk kept away anything that Walsall could throw at us. Anderson opened the scoring on 25 minutes with a sweet volley from the edge of the box following superb work from Joe Allen on the left and the Swans were ahead with their first decent shot on goal. There was some lovely inter passing around the midfield although to an extent it wasn’s as effective at times on Saturday with the flanks not quite overlapping with the same fluency. Bussy and Craney leading the line were nowhere near as effective as either Scotland or Duffy but it was the right decision to give them this start. Changes in the second half saw Robbo replace Anderson at half time, Scotland replace Britts with 25 to go and with 20 to go Duffy replaced Bussy. And at the end of a pretty uneventful second half it was Scotland who ended the game on a high note with a superb finish after being played through by Robbo. Two in two games and the odds on him to finish the divisions top scorer will soon drop and possibly rightly so. Lump on while you can. Not the most inspiring of games but job done and second round achieved. Back to the important stuff on Saturday What are your thoughts? Share your views on the Message Board |
Swansea 2 Walsall 0
