Swansea City will this afternoon pit their wits against the FA Cup holders in Premier League Portsmouth – a chance for many of them to see how they cope with a step up in level.<\/p>\n
However, Roberto does not believe it fair to judge any of his players on this one-off fixture and – to an extent – he says the result is almost irrelevant in a cup game like this.<\/p>\n
Speaking in today’s Western Mail, the Swans boss said \u201cI think it would be very unfair to judge players\u2019 Premiership potential on this one game<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be like deciding whether we are a Championship team or not after the first game at Charlton.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes time to adapt to each level of football. What is clear to me is that I have a group of players who don\u2019t need to prove to me they can compete against Premiership players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know they can play in the Premiership. But everyone needs time to develop into that level.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all want to get there, but the key to getting there is being consistent at Championship level first.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe result, for me, is almost irrelevant because anything can happen in a one-off.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen it ourselves in cup games. Just because things have not gone our way in some games against non-league sides, it does not mean the non-league players are better than what we have.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy biggest concern will be can we be ourselves in the fourth round of the cup at a Premiership environment such as Fratton Park, that is our only challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can do that, irrelevant of the result, I\u2019ll be happy because it shows we are serious about our Championship form.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake no mistake, this is a great occasion, the glamorous tie that we\u2019ve been waiting to give to our fans for a while,\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n
\u201cMemories are big things in football, everything you do is to try and be remembered for.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this is an exciting tie. To be at this stage of competition is a fantastic achievement whoever you play. But facing the holders adds to it to create that excitement.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd, of course, we will be hoping for the magic of the cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the boys will be overawed,\u201d he stressed. \u201cWe have come such a long way now and all the big games we have had this season will help in that respect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have played in Premiership environments at Birmingham, Reading and Wolves and learned from those lessons.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have mentioned Peter Crouch and David James, but, if you want to start getting worried about Portsmouth, then we might as well be getting worried about every single player because of the talent they\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a manager who had a unique career as a player but as a boss has his own beliefs and ideas and who has given his team a very different look.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched them against Tottenham last week and they were very impressive.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo all we can do is approach it like we would any other game and find a way to be ourselves in a difficult environment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Swansea City will this afternoon pit their wits against the FA Cup holders in Premier League Portsmouth – a chance for many of them to see how they cope with a step up in level. However, Roberto does not believe it fair to judge any of his players on this one-off fixture and – to […]<\/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-15980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15980","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=15980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}