The Swansea City and Wales midfielder started his first league game of the campaign at Coventry on Tuesday and remains in line to keep that place on Sunday against Cardiff.<\/p>\n
Although Leon Britton is reported to be returning from injury for the game, Jordi Gomez sits out the game through his one match suspension and Ferrie Bodde is a season long suspension.\u00a0\u00a0 All that means another chance for OTJ to prove himself in the Swans midfield – in the biggest atmosphere of all.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the Coventry game, we were without probably two of our most consistent performers in Ferrie and Leon,\u201d he told the Western Mail<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are two players that show what we are about as a team.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we have talked a lot about squad strength, whoever comes in \u2013 like myself at Coventry \u2013 has to show confidence and what we are all about.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd hopefully just being out there and doing that this week has put myself in the frame for Cardiff.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you speak to the gaffer, you know he sees football as a game where you have to take the chances when they come. You have to have that confidence in yourself.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think I can do that \u2013 this is the chance I\u2019ve been waiting for to nail down a place in the side and it\u2019s up to me to take it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have got to adapt,\u201d he said. \u201cTo be tactically aware is something you have to be with Roberto.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we didn\u2019t have that then we wouldn\u2019t be at the club.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a big part of the way we play. Whether we play with two in the middle or three, the boys have shown they can deal with whichever way Roberto wants it to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, we realise why the supporters are disappointed after Ferrie\u2019s injury because he has shown what a good player he is, and Jordi is proving to be a big player for us because the quality in his play is immense and his goals top it off.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the way we play we do need goals to come from all positions and he has done his fair share of chipping in.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we had Tom Butler come off the bench on Tuesday night, while Shaun MacDonald was also on the bench, so we have options to come in and do a job.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is one of those games where after the game you look back and say you\u2019ve played in a Swansea-Cardiff derby in the Championship,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure what to expect. Last time Cardiff came out of the traps really quickly and it looked like they would be in our faces all game.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter 10 or 15 minutes we slowed the pace down. Whether Cardiff were too pumped up I don\u2019t know, but we showed people what we are about.<\/p>\n
“It is strange being so close together, but it will probably make Sunday an even bigger game knowing we could go above them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is something the fans would really enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Swansea City and Wales midfielder started his first league game of the campaign at Coventry on Tuesday and remains in line to keep that place on Sunday against Cardiff. Although Leon Britton is reported to be returning from injury for the game, Jordi Gomez sits out the game through his one match suspension and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}