And thats what happens when you beleive the hype folks ! right from kick off it was clear yet again that we thought we were superior and not willing to match workrate and win the battles. Its starting to piss me off that we react the same when ever we play teams that hold a certain physical threat . Reading,Southampton Sunderland and now Norwich, how many points spunked away is that now?? It aint ability its attitude im afraid to say, if every single fan knows the threat that these teams bring so why dont the players know it ? is it because they think they are something special and working their bollocks off from the get go is beneath them? Anyway we all knew it was going to be a hard game and we learnt alot today. 1.Leon Britton was missed badly . 2. Ki is sloppy with his passing and will cost us greatly in future games, failing to hit his man with such a simple pass in the final seconds made me mad as we were all lined up for the cross 3. Tremmel will be replaced by Vorm, no excuse for getting beat at the near post and nowhere near the free kick either, has done fantastic for us but i feel Vorm is better and would have saved at least one of those goals. 4. Ben Davies is still green and getting caught out at the far post all the time, having said that i thought he had a really good game apart from critical errors, its going to happen,its part of the learning curve so no blame to him from me, he is doing fantastic considering where he has come the last 12months. 5. Ash is still prone to being sleepy and slow to react, i bet he wouldnt have allowed himself to get turned inside out against Arsenal ! Im not saying the players set out to play badly im just saying that mentally and indeed physically, if we are off 100% we will get punished, it happens too often for it to be coincidence,and it always happens against the teams we should at least be competitive with !! thats why alot of those players are not with top clubs ! the mental toughness needed to be strong against battling teams like Norwich who arnt fancied by anyone but themselves always goes missing! It is vital we beat the teams around us, people were talking about europe the other day !! FFS lads get a grip isit? lets try and stay up first ! it is so tight in this division that dropping sloppy points will come back to haunt you, we have done too much of that this season, and its always against teams below us who are able to claw their way up the places! Im very dissapointed about today, but as i said on another thread it would be typical of swansea to lose this game after going to Arsenal and beating them! and so it proved. Well done to Norwich,i think they played well today and took advantage of poor play from us 1st half, it would have been a shame if they had lost 3pts they deserved them we deserved nothing. Im not even going to talk about the second half, its irrelevent how we performed, the game starts at 3pm not 4pm and some of the players need to remember that! Laudrup said in the press conference before this game that he knew how hard it was going to be, he knew how easy it was playing the likes of Arsenal, its the games against Norwich and Southampton,reading and sunderland that will cost us if we are not focused! they are all teams we are more than capable of beating if we stop fannying about and roll our sleeves up !! We played teams like this week in week out in the championship so im at a loss to figure out why its always a problem, unless of course the players think they are better then they actually are and dont fancy it. Rant over, we had to lose sooner or later, angry at how we started,how many times does laudrup have to give a talk at half time to change us ?? its getting annoying ....arrgghhhh!! Onwards and upwards, maybe an objective viewpoint of where we are at isnt a bad thing, im NEVER comfortable when the Swans are finding things easy!! we are always the underdog and that is where we are at our best! the favourites tag is one that will always hurt us! Thoughts on today please ?
We were poor in the first 45m NJ but to be fair Norwich were very good. We deserved a point from that game. Set pieces are proving to be our undoing at the moment. We need Vorm back soon, he is way more athletic and has better reactions than Tremmel (p.s. I did vote for Vorm in the poll). Look at the positives: Michu played a blinder, JDG had a very good second half and davies did more attacking than defending in the second 45. Negatives: Ki doesn't look up to this level (yet at least), Ash was pretty poor, Tremmel had one to forget and both wingers kept running into cul-de-sac's. If only we had had Vorm and Pablo fit for that one....
I thought our wingers did ok, Routs was overall better than Nathen who can be frustraing of late. JDG had a decent game,better than Ki for me at least. Norwich played well in the first half but everyone knew how they were gonna do it !! close us down fast, everyone behind the ball,deny us space etc,etc they have always had a decent attacking threat and we know how dangerous they are at set piece...so why did we make the same mistakes with a different manager and a different back 4/5 ?? Well there are 2 constants there rangel and ash. It was nice to see DG back playing, i was dissapointed not to see moore start today as i thought he would have offered alot more strength and guile in the final 3rd ,which proved to be true. I dont want to detract from Norwich.s win it was deserved on their work rate and hunger alone in the first 45mins its just that im very annoyed that there seems to always be these probalems with these kinds of teams and half the time its our own undoing not somebody elses , thats the most frustrating thing for me.
That knob Howard Webb tried his best to spoil things today, why on earth was that "goal" disallowed? There was bugger all wrong with it and at 3-3 with the momentum we could have won. That said we didn't deserve anything today, the defending at times was criminal. A park team would have scored 4 today let alone a Premier League team, I still don't knew how the hell the 2nd one crept in and how we leave a centre forward unmarked at a free kick is beyond belief .
nobody was expecting an easy game JR,laudrup summed it up perfectly when he said Norwich are in better form than swansea so there was nothing to be complacient about from us, but we were first halfto a certain degree !!
Im not gonna moan about the ref that would be disrespectful to Norwich i feel, i dont think any ref's have problems with us, they just give it as they see it, i thought it was a touch harsh but the bottom line is that we should'nt be 0-3 at half time to Norwich no matter who the ref is that scoreline had left us with too much to do anyway, it was lost in the first 45mins for me.
Thank you Norway for you kind comments. Bit disappointed to see some comments coming through here and on another thread about the ref. Whilst the foul may have been fortunate, what should be of most concern for Swans fans is being 3 -0 down by half time as you are indicating. You are right, people can get carried away when you beat a club that are seen as top 4. It is beating teams like us that should get as much concern. A great game for the Prem between two decent sides who hopefully will be safe and move on this year. Lets not have sour grapes here. If you want to put it right come to CR. and win ( although we do seem to enjoy playing you!) On a side note, I am not a fan of Ashely Williams. Players like Holt do well against him. Whilst you are potent up front, Laudrup should look at the CB position for me and Vorm back in the side. Good luck for the rest of the season
Funny when we win we ignore the weakness in individuals play ,then highlight them when we lose. De guzan is no Leon for sure and by the time the second half came the damage was done..Norwich deserved their win based on their first half performance a extremely well drilled side . We dominated the second half and as always when chasing the game you're always open to the counter attack.This was another game where it took a half time kick up the arse for the players to realise to get anything out of today they'd half to put in a bit more effort than previously shown . Holt did a job on both Chico and Ash today and I've never seen so high balls mis judged.Norwich didn't play with full backs and just loaded the back with centre half type players which was effective a .No guile in our play today for me ,we played well in patches but not enough to win it.
Why not criticise the ref ? He got quite a bit wrong today not just a big decision and its not the 1st time Webb hasn't done us any favours. But as I've already said, no grudges towards Norwich from me, sometimes you get the decisions sometimes not. We didn't deserve anything today just because of the way we defended.
Up to you if you want ot blame the ref, im not gonna bother, truth is we should not have been in that position in the first place, the ref's have been fair and give what they see, doesnt matter if it was a goal or not its what the ref gives !!
Our defending was criminal, and for Ash then to conceded a free kick when why not shepherd the player out wide, we know Norwich have talented players and look what happens from the resultant free kick. Poor judgment by Ash then, that fourth goal took the wind out of our sails, as I do think we would have got something out of the game if we hadn't conceded then
Believe it or not but Ash was losing that race , lucky that Chico chased back into the centre and between Tremmel and the incident or Ash would have walked
As a matter of fact, I often post criticism when we play well. I have mentioned Ki and JdG a number of times (again today on another thread) when we won. You should ALWAYS be looking at players' weaknesses no matter what the result, otherwise how will they improve. For "you" read Michael Laudrup or any other manager in practice, but we debate it on here. This week, I actually received a pm from an agitated poster berating me for criticising Ki. Now I rate Ki and believe he will be a good player for us in time. But right now he is a bit of a "fair weather" player, looking good when we are on top but obviously struggling when we are not. JdG is similar. Lack of talent isn't our problem. Lack of attitude certainly is.
Thanks Ivor There is always a tendency to have a go at objective posts and articles after a defeat,almost like fans need to take out their frustrations of the afternoon on somebody highlighting the bad points of a performance . Thats ok with me, its what creates good debate and there is nothing wrong with saying it how you see it! Ivor has very astutely picked up on a few parts to Ki's game which i 100% agree with, if we are all being honest here how many people would have been bitching about some of the lose passes made if Mark Gower was involved ??very many i suspect!! I find it very intresting to look at how players perform and where their weak/strong points are, its sometimes easy to see the strong points and when things are going well its easy to forget our limitations/weak points (which arrived on cue yesterday by the way). if you read my articles the last few weeks there have been some consistant points made RE Ash,Ben Davies,Tremmel and Ki , some of these were made on the back of good performances and some on bad performances, they have come to the forefront this weekend and to some people like myself and ivor its no suprise, doesnt mean we like it ! it just means that its a point of discussion pre and post match. What people must remember is that support for the players is always 100% when on the field,talking and debating formation,playing selection,tactics and performance comes afterwards in the pub in the car driving home or on the message boards. That is part of the fun isnt it? We all saw the game yesterday and we all saw the how below average the performance was in the first 45mins, the fact we were much better in the 2nd half told me everything i needed to know about the players attitude! If they had been **** for 90mins fair enough, the fact they wernt told me they wernt up for it like they should have been,on purpose or not performance and mental toughness was missing, players like Ki will do very well for us but like i stated 24hrs before the game it was time for him and JDG to step up with Leon being injured...guess what? didnt happen,more so for Ki IMO. People talk about how great he is and indeed he is but dont forget he cost £5m quid!! he is supposed to be!! i have yet to see him run the show in midfield, it may take a bit of time but when as a player your not sure if the guy passing you the ball is going to pass it correctly and crisply it makes your movement stagnate,underhitting passes is criminal in our system especially in Ki's position, there is no doubthe needs to up the pace and maybe playing in scottish football hasnt helped him get to terms with the movement and pace. I dont want it to sound like he is not doing well,he is ! we are talking about fractions here thats all, he is a 7/10 always,he is solid..but so is kemy! Its the fractions that make a difference in a team and make debating players and performance intresting. An example of this is Dobbie, always created fantastic debate! i had no time for him in the prem league, i didnt think his touch was good enough and his speed of thought was lacking,he lacks pace also. to me thats his weak points,those are the fractions involved with him in prem league/ccc . Others strongly disagreed and thats up to them but it didnt mean that i didnt want him to come on the field and score a hatrick!! i loved him as a player actually,just not quite good enough for me. I guess all im saying is that we learn alot about players when things dont go according to plan and im sure Laudrup feels exactly the same way, he will be thinking about why we were mentally weak and not switched on,he will identify it and look to improve on it, unlike other managers i think Laudrup is ruthless enough to make the correct decisions and not put it down to a bad day at the office(or take a short cut if you like)we are weak at set piece and have been for years so there are only a few constants that have remained there in all that time . Nothing has ever changed in football, when im watching the game at the Vetch/Liberty i have always been in the pub/bus afterwards and looked at who played good and who was ****,who has the same weakness and who is improving (Ben Davies is improving at a rate of knots) its great to transfer all this to a message board and debate it here, ive never been one for just talking about how ****ing great we are and how we are going to Europe and going to finish top 8 i find that boring TBH! its the same as people getting upset when players get critizised, when they play well then they deserve the plaudits when they play poor they deserve constructive critizism! Its what makes the forum so fun to be on
Ivor had a pm from someone because he had a pop at Ki? FFS that is crazy, we all know that Ki has been a let down so far but the whole point of the board is to debate these things. I can quite honestly say that in my opinion Ki is the weakest link in our midfield. Britton and Michu are miles ahead of Ki at the moment. I really hope that Ki improves over the rest of the season but if not and he get's sold on then I wouldn't be crying about it.
