Before I go on let me just remind you of something that I think is important<\/p>\n
So that kills the myth that the Swans are a bad side.\u00a0\u00a0 Although in fairness that was not something that former player Leighton James actually accused them of but you would be entitled to wonder what is going on when he claims he has a “big concern”\u00a0 So what is that concern?\u00a0\u00a0 Well, to start with we lost to Havant and Waterlooville in the FA Cup.\u00a0\u00a0 And then we lost to MK Dons in the Paint Pot Trophy – on penalties having beaten the league two leaders on their own patch.\u00a0\u00a0 Both those cup defeats were disappointing in the fact that it denied supporters a day at Anfield and Wembley and granted it also cost the club the financial rewards that trips like that bring.\u00a0\u00a0 But they were just cup games.\u00a0\u00a0 Leighton says “Swansea are not the most physically dominant side and seem to find it hard to cope when teams get amongst them”\u00a0\u00a0 Which of course is a fair comment when you consider the footballing feasts that we have witnessed from our opposition all season.\u00a0 You know the Brazil-esque passing, the neat one touch football displayed by such cultured footballing sides as Bournemouth, Crewe and Port Vale.<\/p>\n
Leighton goes on to highlight a league defeat at Leeds where we were out-muscled but he fails to make any mention of the fact that we beat Leeds at the Liberty in December.\u00a0\u00a0 We have also been involved in physical battles against other sides this season – surely even Leighton can realise that we are one of the few sides in the division to play football – and most definitely it is a minority, the majority like to play physical.\u00a0 And the majority of sides also come to the Liberty to try and put us off our game.\u00a0\u00a0 Ten sides in a row have tried – ten sides in a row have failed.<\/p>\n
So why did we lose the cup games that are such a big concern to the former Welsh international?\u00a0\u00a0 We lost to Havant because they scored more goals than us.\u00a0\u00a0 Sarcasm aside we lost to them because we failed miserably to put away enough of the umpteen chances that we had at the Liberty.\u00a0 We had more chances than them at their place.\u00a0\u00a0 We conceded a couple of soft goals and hit the woodwork too many times.\u00a0\u00a0 Were we out muscled?\u00a0\u00a0 Probably at times yes.\u00a0 Should we have won?\u00a0 Yes we should – we just didn’t take chances when it mattered.\u00a0\u00a0 And the same could be argued for the MK Dons game.\u00a0 Three blatant one on one chances in the first 45 minutes could have killed the game off – we missed out there.\u00a0\u00a0 Possibly over the two legs we may have ended as second best and maybe deservedly so but they are League Two leaders for a reason and sometimes in the cup the lower ranked team wins.\u00a0\u00a0 Remember Sheffield United last year?\u00a0\u00a0 Look what happened to them.<\/p>\n
The problem as I see it is that Leighton has nothing to say so he may as well be controversial.\u00a0\u00a0 He says we don’t score enough from free kicks and corners.\u00a0\u00a0 Potentially he is right but how many teams have scored more goals than us this season?\u00a0\u00a0 We only have two or three players that can head a ball he adds, Darren Pratley was poor before Christmas he tells us.\u00a0\u00a0 He continues to say that we need to be strong but then adds that strength isn’t as important as you climb the league ladders.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe slightly contradictory there don’t you think Leighton?<\/p>\n
I really don’t see the need to pick holes when this season has been absolutely superb and people are enjoying the football after years of dross being served up at times.\u00a0 What do we get in next week’s column, Andy Robinson grows his stubble at all the wrong angles, Alan Tate should search for a new hairdresser, Dennis Lawrence is just too tall.<\/p>\n
Leighton, we’re top of the league, sit back, enjoy it and think just why Roberto Martinez is taking us to somewhere we haven’t been for 25 years and you are writing in a local newspaper.\u00a0\u00a0 And that’s from someone who enjoyed watching you play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before I go on let me just remind you of something that I think is important Swansea City are currently 1st in their division with 70 points – more points than any other team in the football league Their nearest challengers lie 12 points behind them, the team in third place is a further 2 […]<\/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-7036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7036","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=7036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}