here<\/a><\/strong>) we have become a team with no identity, a team that has no attractive football being played and a team that is frankly going nowhere.\u00a0 \u00a0Four games ago it was not about play off possibilities but automatic promotion, right now there is a real serious chance that we could even miss out on the end of season lottery.<\/p>\nIt is difficult to know if the manager has lost the dressing room, whether the players are playing to orders or whether this is the result of how we have played all season and that the rub of the green (or the bounce of the ball) has never gone against us.\u00a0 \u00a0We said in our early match reports that the lack of a recognised striker could come back and haunt us but the biggest issue appears to be that we have no (Zero, Nil, Negative, Nada) creativity in this side as is demonstrated by the pathetic number of shots and attempts that we have at goal.<\/p>\n
Even if you think back to the Cardiff game and the statistics of that one (23 shots, one on target) did you ever think “it is a matter of time before we score” or was it more a case of “Cardiff are holding out easily and could hit us on the break if we are not careful” – on reflection the latter seemed more likely at the time than the former.<\/p>\n
In midfield we have three players (perm any three from Grimes, Fulton, Smith, Dhanda and Hourihane) who are all but the same player but with different names.\u00a0 \u00a0Each of them largely defensive, each of them more prone to a backward pass than a forward one and, right now, each of them as likely to pass the ball to the opposition than one of our own players.\u00a0 \u00a0Even the three yard passes are now going astray.\u00a0 \u00a0Up front Jamal Lowe and Andre Ayew have scored five goals for us from open play between them in 2021.\u00a0 \u00a0Lowe has not scored since mid January and Ayew has (penalties aside) scored just twice – as many as Ben Cabango.<\/p>\n
Each of the midfielders and attackers are as shot shy as each other.\u00a0 \u00a0You can say the forwards get no service but largely they don’t look for the ball and they certainly aren’t hungry strikers.\u00a0 In fact both are more likely to try for a free kick\/penalty as they are to shoot at goal.\u00a0 We had a few shots yesterday, all of them as woeful as each other, some of them it is rumoured stayed inside the Liberty but the camera work was not quick enough to prove that to be the case.<\/p>\n
Our defensive strength that kept us going through the first half of the season has largely gone.\u00a0 \u00a0Some of that is down to Cooper’s insistence of making more changes in the back three than he does anywhere.\u00a0 That leads to uncertainty and confusion at times and it is more evident as the season goes on.\u00a0 \u00a0We had not scored more than 2 in a game until we faced Forest in the FA Cup but we got points because we were defensively strong.\u00a0 \u00a0We now aren’t the latter but the goalscoring is even more of a problem.<\/p>\n
Ahead of yesterday we were promised that people would go for it.\u00a0 We were looking to take the chance we had worked to create for ourselves (league position wise) and we were ready to put the recent results behind us.\u00a0 \u00a0What happened was we put in a performance that was as turgid as the one at Birmingham but felt more painful because at least we had a shot on target at Birmingham (even though we never looked like scoring a goal).<\/p>\n
In the commentary box Leon Britton seemed embarrassed to be talking about these players or what they could offer to the team, Ant O’Connell was more interested in pointless stats about when Preston last won in Swansea (with of course the obligatory reference to Deepdale and 81) but frankly they could have gone home just beyond 3pm, the job of the commentator is to commentate on the action and there was frankly none.<\/p>\n
The goal itself was laughable and, I’ll be honest, I laughed when it went in.\u00a0 Not because I wanted to lose but it stopped the post match comments of “We have a point and we can now build on it” which could now be replaced by “we have to stand up and be counted”, “We were under par again” and “We want to take our chances.”\u00a0 \u00a0Why any of them matter though in the order that they are used is debatable as frankly we deliver nothing on the pitch and haven’t done for several weeks.<\/p>\n
We said Huddersfield and Bristol City were one offs when they happened but take away the last minute penalties against Stoke and Middlesbrough and we would currently this morning be sat 7th in the table.\u00a0 Just let that sink in for a minute as it could easily have happened.<\/p>\n
It is difficult to know where this run will end or indeed whether it will.\u00a0 More and more people are starting to think that the recent form is the real Swansea City.\u00a0 \u00a0For the large part of this season we have not been “fun” to watch but the results were either making up for it or masking the position we were really in.\u00a0 The 1-0 wins, the late equalisers, the disputed penalties all kept us in touch with the top end but frankly Norwich, Bournemouth and, yes even them, Brentford are much much better than us.<\/p>\n
There are many things that could be the answer to the position but right now we are a Championship team in preparation for next season, the only question yet to be answered is whether we are playing out a 46 or a 48 game season.<\/p>\n
The disappointment has definitely subsided from yesterday, the anger will live on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So the Swans capitulation at home to Preston North End yesterday afternoon is not even 24 hours ago yet but as the next day dawns you start to wonder whether thing will change sufficiently in the next 7 games to firstly secure that play off position and then to secure the promotion that the winning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203],"tags":[557,317],"class_list":["post-39722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","tag-swansea-v-preston-5th-april-2021-efl-championship","tag-20-21-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39722","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}