{"id":73457,"date":"2022-12-13T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T08:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/?p=73457"},"modified":"2022-12-13T07:53:21","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T07:53:21","slug":"joe-allen-his-fitness-is-key-for-swansea-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/2022\/12\/13\/joe-allen-his-fitness-is-key-for-swansea-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Allen &#8211; his fitness is key for Swansea City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Allen&#8217;s name will always be carved in the history books at Swansea City as one of the players who played a huge part in the Swans rise into the Premier League, a status that they achieved back in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Allen played 150 games for the Swans between his debut in 2007 and his final game against Liverpool in May 2012.\u00a0 Ironically, his next league game was for Liverpool after he followed Brendan Rodgers to Anfield in a \u00a315m deal making 130 appearances over 4 years at Anfield before his time came to an end with a \u00a313m move to Stoke.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty aligncenter\"><a id='fwHkpcKMShRMYqcDu04CHw' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1242846887' target='_blank' style='color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;'>Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'fwHkpcKMShRMYqcDu04CHw',sig:'G3OgHT_GlL5RvY95Rq7uRWLPCkNYE-LrB5fnL6ZlW-w=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1242846887',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/div>\n<p>Six further years followed in the Potteries and over 220 games before he returned to South Wales back in the summer with his career moving full circle in the final stages of it.<\/p>\n<p>His return to SA1 has been blighted though by injury and whilst he did manage to regain fitness to represent Wales at the World Cup it is league football that Swans fans want to see him playing with just nine league appearances under his belt since his return here.<\/p>\n<p>Allen was a second half substitute at the weekend as the Swans marked their own return to league action with a defeat to Norwich but he is now very much in the frame for selection this weekend when we head to Coventry looking for a first league win in seven.<\/p>\n<p>Allen&#8217;s fitness could very much be key for the Swans this season with creativity lacking in many parts of our midfield who can dominate games in terms of possession but very rarely in terms of taking complete control of the game to turn that possession into the points that we all crave.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty aligncenter\"><a id='yN3dy_l5QjV56sSgWGZxYQ' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1242613404' target='_blank' style='color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;'>Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'yN3dy_l5QjV56sSgWGZxYQ',sig:'Su0_qw2fCW0o6bcQAtYHPymxYj73ul_dynCSO3JvL-s=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1242613404',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/div>\n<p>Allen himself knows he wants to make a bigger impact here in Swansea following his return and not just play a small part of a team which would make the move last summer look like glorified romanticism rather than a move to add value to the team and results.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to having a much bigger impact on the second half of the season,&#8221; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.swanseacity.com\/news\/joe-allen-ready-have-impact-swansea-city\">Allen told the club&#8217;s official website<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s been great to get back among the swing of things here and great to be back amongst the boys.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTraining has been great all week, which has been good.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a long spell for me now without regular training or game time so the aim for me now is to be fully match fit, get more minutes and get out on the pitch and help the team get results.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe timing of the games has fallen well for me \u2013 normally at this time it\u2019s the complete opposite \u2013 so I\u2019ve been lucky in a way because I\u2019ll have a better chance to get the training in which I desperately need and it means I won\u2019t miss out on too much game time hopefully.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty aligncenter\"><a id='5bPjj_w8SXx79pyeSH11gA' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1242409202' target='_blank' style='color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;'>Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'5bPjj_w8SXx79pyeSH11gA',sig:'sKezvaHjPUHT7dqx58x9ThhF0AT-okaEcekTV_TWOWA=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1242409202',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Allen&#8217;s name will always be carved in the history books at Swansea City as one of the players who played a huge part in the Swans rise into the Premier League, a status that they achieved back in 2011. Allen played 150 games for the Swans between his debut in 2007 and his final [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":452,"featured_media":73459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203],"tags":[515,665],"class_list":["post-73457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","tag-joe-allen","tag-the-2022-23-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73457","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\/452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}