Maybe it was West Brom's 3-0 win over Southampton on Saturday which sucked the spirit out of the Swansea dressing room on Sunday. Now faced with a six-point gap to close on their nearest rivals in the standings, the only answer Swansea could come up with against Chelsea was more of the same disinterested, lazy play in a 2-0 loss which has become a worrying hallmark of the side's performances of late. Things had looked to be improving following decent games against Norwich and Southampton, but Swansea started slowly at Stamford Bridge and couldn't pick up the pace. An early injury to Chelsea midfielder Ramires saw Frank Lampard introduced in his place, with the Chelsea legend showing more enthusiasm than the entire Swansea City squad combined. Lampard's energy made all the difference in the first half. It was his ball which set up Oscar for Chelsea's first, and his converted penalty kick which put the London side up by two goals shortly before the break. Swansea could only manage a couple of quarter-chances throughout the first 45, with the Swans' attack perhaps looking slightly more invested than their mistake-prone defence and non-existent midfield. Perhaps the Swans' first half was best summed up with the last action before the break. The ball fell kindly for Ki Sung-Yueng, who possesses a deadly but rarely seen long shot, but before the Korean could wind up, he slipped and the chance was lost. After the interval, when you might have expected Michael Laudrup to verbally eviscerate his players, not much appeared to have changed for the first 10 minutes or so of the second. Approaching the hour mark, Swansea started to create chances, more as a consequence of Chelsea's own low tempo and comfortability in their two-goal lead than any great enthusiasm on the part of the Swans players. However, the same sloppiness endemic to Swansea all game long saw their few promising attacks come to nothing. Jonathan De Guzman's choice to attempt a difficult back-heel instead of straight-forward shot after he had jumped onto a loose pass from Lampard was possibly the most notable of a series of frustrations. Such was the apparent hopelessness of the Swans cause that even referee Mark Clattenburg appeared to take pity, choosing not to show Ash Williams a deserved second yellow card in the 72nd minute. The way Williams was playing, he might have ill-appreciated Clattenburg's mercy and been rather more grateful for an excuse to get off the the field and draw a close to a frankly terrible performance. The Swans will probably be grateful their captain won't be suspended for Saturday's fixture against Manchester City. On a day when two relegation-threatened teams saw fit to consign each other to the drop by settling for a flat draw, it should be no wonder that this game didn't offer much entertainment either, Chelsea coasting in neutral and the Swans embarrassing themselves with another lacklustre performance. - Max Hicks Final Thoughts: Positives: The brief return of Neil Taylor. Negatives : Everything else.
First class summary from Max, as usual. This guy is well worth following at ESPN. He is a fanatical Swans' supporter but always tells it how it is.
You guys better sort it out for the Wigan game, we really do not want Wigan winning this one and closing the gap but I fear they are going to beat you
Thing is Wigan are doing their usual again, and on their day come end of season, they can beat anyone, can't see us winning it to be honest, best we get is a draw on current form!.............
DP, they are not doing their usual at all, or at least not yet. Although they are drawing a few they are struggling to find wins and this is not "their normal" as they had strung 3 or 4 wins on the bounce this time last season. I hope at worst you guys can just shut the door and stop them scoring, the best they will get is a point and that will be just fine for us
It's all about debate cartoon!!..... No good labelling posters constructive criticism as negative and unsupportive, we are here because of our philosophy and the pursuit of excellence, and that is being compromised by these far from adequate performances of late, simply not good enough, and I'm sure Laudrup would have put it much stronger in the dressing room! Perhaps you can do a cartoon of him throwing a boot at Ashley Williams, just like Fergie did, just a thought..................
I can't believe we're still in 9th place. I know we had a bit of a cushion but everyone below us must be playing crap as well.
Aswan that's a valid point, but we had a great cushion, which we have sat on till it disappeared, we went of the boil a bit last season under Rodgers too, once we had our 40 points!..................
Just checked, after beating Newcastle 1-0 we were up to 8th with 40 points and had a 7 point cushion over Fulham, Stoke & West Ham who all had 33 points. http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/...ate=1362441599999&tableView=CURRENT_STANDINGS Since March 4th: Swansea - 2 points out of 18 Fulham - 7/21 Stoke - 7/21 West Ham - 9/21 Southampton - 12/21 Norwich - 6/21 Sunderland - 7/18 (not including tonight) Newcastle - 7/21
I believe that if we had not changed our winning formula that we played last season and most of the first half of this season we would be challenging 5th or 6th place at the very least.......I believe if its not broke then dont change it... unfortunatly we did and points wise we are in free fall.....we are so lucky there are teams worst than us this season....
Our midfield has lost it's shape since Joe's gone, poor old Britton is left on his own to battle for the ball, the rest are show ponies!..............
Hopefully with a couple of new strikers in the summer, and Michu and Canas in MF, they can help take the pressure off Leon next season. The poor bugger doesn't half take a battering on times, but gets up and keeps on going. If only Ki and JDG, had an ounce of the determination he has, we'd be flying.
why did we do well at the beginning of the season with these same players and now you say they are crap.......Its nothing to do with the players they are just as good as they were.....It the change of playing style that has seen us fade away and not the players......Its so obvious a blind man can tell why...
I was talking to Max (who wrote the article) and he reckons Man City is our best shout at a point. Ever the optimist eh!?! Sure our results have been poor but we have faced some top opposition (Chelski, Spurs, Gunners) recently, we were robbed of a point at West Brom so maybe the whole recent points haul is a little more understandable. The southampton game wasn't great and chelsea was shocking but all in all it could be worse. If we were fighting for survival it may (ironically) have given the team some extra zip and desire and hence more points. They say that you learn more from your failures than your successes and for swansea this is true. The cup final was a walk over so nothing learned there. The 2 legged semi final showed a bit more desire and quality as the games were so important. recently however we have had time to see the weaker links in the team as the fight has gone out of us: #JDG could have been signed for £5-7m if our form hadn't dropped, maybe now ML will change his opinion of him and either drive a harder bargain or not sign him at all. #ML has also spotted the need for a combatitive midfielder and has sorted the Canas signing but importantly at the right price (ie free!) and the cost to the team has been to wait for one transfer window. #DG went for (what appears to be) off-pitch reasons, gower shipped out now (Brendan didn't have the stones to do this). #Kemy looks to be on his way as he isn't getting a look in. Other positives for the season have been safety achieved early, a major trophy in the cabinet, huge profits from selling players at inflated prices, Michu & Chico both being good bets for signing of the season, Ben Davies being given a shot and taking it with both hands, rangel improving every game, Moore actually scoring some goals and probably loads more that haven't sprung to mind just yet. All in all, ML has shown astute talent signing qualities, won a trophy and given us world-wide audience. All hail the viKING! As the dust settles from being embarrased at Chelsea a sense of perspective kicks in and you know what I'm smiling thinking about this season. BEST EVER! p.s. in the interest of fairness I have one negative about ML. Itay Shekter. But the danish wizard was astute enough not to buy him outright.every cloud and all that!
