{"id":54226,"date":"2022-02-02T21:43:26","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T21:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging28.planetswans.co.uk\/?p=54226"},"modified":"2022-02-02T21:43:26","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T21:43:26","slug":"is-russell-martin-under-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/2022\/02\/02\/is-russell-martin-under-pressure\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Russell Martin under pressure?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following yet another disappointment at the Swansea.com Stadium last night against Luton, the noises of discontent seemed to get slightly louder.<\/p>\n

Swansea woke up this morning to a Championship table making grim reading, sitting in lowly 19th position but still 12 points off Peterborough who occupy the final relegation slot in 22nd place.<\/p>\n

The 1-0 defeat made a bleak run of form even worse with the statistics showing a miserable one win in eight games, which came against Preston North End a couple of weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Not only is that a major concern, but the Swans seem to have a bad combination of struggling to score goals and failing to keep them out at the other end in a stark difference from the past two seasons under Steve Cooper.<\/p>\n

For all Cooper’s detractors, of which there were many mainly relating to style of play, he knew how to organise us defensively and ensure we were well drilled the majority of the time.<\/p>\n

That now seems worlds away from current day with confidence low throughout the team and a Manager still convinced in his thoughts but struggling to deliver where it really matters.<\/p>\n

Many fans were happy when Martin arrived to dismiss any thoughts of a promotion challenge in favour of a return to the fluid and stylish football that helped the Swans rise from League One to the Premier League under Roberto Martinez and Brendan Rodgers.<\/p>\n

But with the trajectory downwards for quite some time, the questions are now starting to come from fans as to whether the Martin brand will achieve what was expected in the long term.<\/p>\n

Fans had their say<\/a> in the immediate aftermath of the loss last night and a poll ran on the forum showed that the supporters still have faith in the Manager, 64% favouring him staying to see out his plan for the club.<\/p>\n

In terms of the January window, it could be argued that Martin wasn’t backed sufficiently, but five players did arrive to follow on from even more in the summer.<\/p>\n

There can be no doubt that the team is starting to look as Martin would like to see, although he no doubt desperately wanted the likes of Matt O’Riley (who put in another stellar display for Celtic against Rangers tonight).<\/p>\n

Time is needed to understand whether the long term plan is worth pursuing. There also in the short term needs to be a tangible improvement in form to keep as many fans as possible onside before the summer comes, where there will undoubtedly be more movements in and out of the club.<\/p>\n

Nobody can say for sure whether Martin will be a success long term, or whether he will even be here long term. For now however, all we can do is show our support on Saturday the best we can and back both him and the team.<\/p>\n

A couple of wins makes the world of difference, and as we all know football has a habit of surprising us all. Let’s hope that some real form is just around the corner because winning is important – it’s why we all love football.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following yet another disappointment at the Swansea.com Stadium last night against Luton, the noises of discontent seemed to get slightly louder. Swansea woke up this morning to a Championship table making grim reading, sitting in lowly 19th position but still 12 points off Peterborough who occupy the final relegation slot in 22nd place. The 1-0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203,306],"tags":[769,636,608],"class_list":["post-54226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","category-reactions","tag-opinion","tag-russell-martin","tag-the-2021-22-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54226","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\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}