23 games including a 2 game cup run is a fair barometer of where your team is and for anyone to be able to take a clear picture of the past and what is to come in the future.<\/p>\n
Three wins from that amount of games, two of which came against ten men for long periods tells a bleak story; one which despite an improved display at Millwall last night shows no sign of turning around.<\/p>\n
Things looked rosy in October after a fantastic run of form but ever since there’s been nothing but misery and little to be positive about for the rest of this season and what the summer holds.<\/p>\n
I reflected on Saturday’s loss at home to Middlesbrough by saying I felt numb as I have for many matches over this run of form. This is not the same anger that I would feel after any loss – especially at home – that would practically ruin my weekend.<\/p>\n
The fact that there was little in the way of dissent from the stands on Saturday spoke more volume for me and says that the club and fans are in as big a malaise as we’ve ever seen in SA1.<\/p>\n
Indeed I woke this morning feeling angry but that was probably more to do with watching our manager laughing with the Millwall players as he trudged off after yet another defeat. And then to hear that Martin had held good talks with Steve Kaplan was a further kick in the teeth.<\/p>\n
No manager survives this run despite the mitigation that he might offer as to why his team are so hopeless on the pitch. Yes he wasn’t backed in January but he has been otherwise and with a spend of \u00a38m over 18 months it can’t be argued.<\/p>\n
Indeed last night was just a typical Swansea City show under this manager and will be until the inevitable time when he is released. That could be the summer, it could be sooner but it is a matter of when, not if.<\/p>\n
According to Martin, Kaplan spoke about the players, what’s needed in the summer and offered some support for his ‘long term vision.’ That is in no way despite claims to the contrary a backing of the manager.<\/p>\n
“I had a good couple of hours with Steve this afternoon and he just reinforced the support for what we’re doing in the long term,” Martin said post match.<\/p>\n
“He asked a lot of questions about a lot of the players and the period we’ve been through. He’s been really supportive since I’ve been at Swansea.<\/p>\n
“It was just a good honest conversation. He offered a lot of support and a lot of encouragement.<\/p>\n
“We spoke a lot about the summer and about what the squad needs. As I’ve said before, it’s a huge summer for the club. There’s going to have to be a lot of people coming into the building and a lot of attributes we haven’t been able to sign last summer or in January which is what we’ve been crying out for.<\/p>\n
The Americans are finance orientated and can see that the values of players are dropping game by game during this run. Ben Cabango, touted for a bright future looks broken, Joel Piroe looks off colour and Morgan Whittaker would be lucky to be valued at half the \u00a32m Rangers wanted him for in January.<\/p>\n
For now, we can only sit and wait to see what happens. Bristol City at home sits between us and a two week international break after five losses in the last six.<\/p>\n
With Blackpool hitting six past QPR last night it shows that points are needed to pull us away from the drop. It’ll need everything from the fans, ignoring the position of the manager, to help us towards a positive result. However unlikely it may seem this morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
23 games including a 2 game cup run is a fair barometer of where your team is and for anyone to be able to take a clear picture of the past and what is to come in the future. Three wins from that amount of games, two of which came against ten men for long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":73362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203,306],"tags":[636,665],"class_list":["post-77875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","category-reactions","tag-russell-martin","tag-the-2022-23-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77875","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=77875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}