ESPN Soccernet<\/p>\n
Jonathan Grounds scored his first goal for his boyhood club but Middlesbrough saw their hopes of continuing their unbeaten run at the Riverside ended as promotion-chasing Swansea snatched a dramatic 4-3 win.<\/p>\n
Marvin Emnes struck first before Nathan Dyer’s impressive finish gave the visitors brief parity. Grounds headed home from a free-kick before Leroy Lita doubled the lead just after the break.<\/p>\n
Scott Sinclair narrowed the gap with a well-placed penalty before Ashley Williams levelled and Craig Beattie snatched victory at the death.<\/p>\n
Emnes, previously on loan at the Liberty Stadium this season, opened the scoring after eight minutes, receiving a pinpoint pass from Lita and swivelling on the spot to wrongfoot Dorus de Vries and slot home from just inside the box.<\/p>\n
Swansea did not let their heads drop and responded quickly following a move worthy of the best passing sides in the world.<\/p>\n
Seb Hines made a rangy run into the opposition half before losing control of the ball. Swansea’s quick counter-attacking dazed the Boro defence, four or five fluid passes finding Luke Moore on the right wing.<\/p>\n
Dyer took Moore’s cross unopposed to complete an excellent move from 12 yards out, side-footing past Jason Steele to level in the 14th minute.<\/p>\n
The Swans’ command of possession was at times eroded by sloppy defensive play and Lita found himself with a golden opportunity to take the lead. De Vries did well to parry a driven shot from just inside his penalty area.<\/p>\n
Williams brought Scott McDonald down 25 yards from goal on 34 minutes. Barry Robson whipped in the resultant free-kick over a Swans wall that neglected to jump, finding Grounds in space to fire his first goal for Boro with a simple header.<\/p>\n
The hosts’ visibly improved after regaining the advantage and Hines was unlucky not to double the advantage before half-time.<\/p>\n
After ghosting in to the far post, his strong header from a Tony McMahon corner was cleared off the line by Angel Rangel.<\/p>\n
Tony Mowbray’s teamtalk must have focused on exposing Swansea’s frailty on the counter-attack as the hosts set out to nullify the fast one-touch football on display.<\/p>\n
The improved mentality paid dividends when Robson’s corner rebounded to Lita who headed home from close range just eight minutes after the restart.<\/p>\n
Middlesbrough’s joy was short lived when Julio Arca fouled Joe Allen on the hour mark. Sinclair stepped up to fire his penalty low to Steele’s right to narrow the gap.<\/p>\n
The daylight between the two sides was extinguished when Williams seized on Rangel’s rebounding effort to tap in from six yards on 68 minutes.<\/p>\n
Beattie snatched all three points with an injury-time winner, though, striking left-footed from 20 yards to break Middlesbrough fans’ hearts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ESPN Soccernet Jonathan Grounds scored his first goal for his boyhood club but Middlesbrough saw their hopes of continuing their unbeaten run at the Riverside ended as promotion-chasing Swansea snatched a dramatic 4-3 win. Marvin Emnes struck first before Nathan Dyer’s impressive finish gave the visitors brief parity. Grounds headed home from a free-kick before […]<\/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-17953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17953","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=17953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}