Match Day Thread Preston North End v Swansea City

Preston North End v Swansea City

Competition - Sky Bet Championship
Venue - Deepdale
Date - 12 September 2020
Kick off - 3pm

Following their shocking performance away at Newport County, in the Carabao Cup, that resulted in an embarrassing 2-0 defeat, next up for Steve Cooper’s stuttering Swans is a trip to Lancashire to face Preston in the first Championship match of the season.

Last Saturday, League Two Newport pulled off one of the shocks of the round to dump Welsh rivals Swansea out thanks to a deserved 2-0 win.

A double from forward Tristan Abrahams in the first half meant the Swans become the latest side to be upset in a cup competition by the Exiles.

Newport were good value for the victory and were always a match for Steve Cooper's Championship side.

The Swans had more chances after the interval, but Newport held firm.

Whilst the Swans were losing at Rodney Parade, Preston were taking no pity on lowly Mansfield as they cruised into the Carabao Cup second round with an impressive 4-0 victory at Deepdale.

Goals from Tom Barkhuizen, Sean Maguire, Patrick Bauer and Josh Harrop did the damage as the Championship side proved far too strong for their League Two visitors. The prize for Preston is an away match at Derby County in round 2.

The Swans have met Preston on 63 previous occasions, winning 25, drawing 18 and losing 20.

In the corresponding fixture at Deepdale last season, the match ended in a 1-1 draw in front of a crowd of 12,502 (..... if only there could be half as many on Saturday ......) with former Swan Scott Sinclair scoring for Preston before an equaliser from Rhian Brewster:

Turning to Saturday, the Swans will have to show a marked improvement on their performance at Rodney Parade, and changes can be expected to be made with several players returning from international duty. I’m expecting Cooper to select the following starting XI:

Woodman; Roberts, Cabango, Guehi, Rodon, Bidwell, Smith, Grimes (C), Gibbs-White; Ayew, Lowe

Hopefully, the Swans will return to South Wales with at least a point, but I’m expecting that they will go down 2-0. Hopefully, I will be wrong!

 

Like the confidence Taff....the problem is that the manager doesn’t exude any confidence at the moment so how can the players or fans for that matter. We know we need at least one striker in probably two but it seems we are going with Andre and Lowe with Cullen as back up. I am sure defences will be quaking in their boots. Yes it is a marathon not a sprint but we need a good start as there will probably be an almighty scramble of clubs going for promotion to the promised land this season....

 

Last season, we had a great start and a very decent finish to the League programme - the middle we were ‘awful’ at times.

Cooper looks and acts more like a ‘tactical adviser’ at the side of the pitch, yet I’m not sure how tactically astute he actually is.....

As I mentioned previously, the Millwall away performance demonstrated pretty conclusively that he had failed to learn anything whatsoever from the first encounter at the Liberty.

Hopefully, he has learned the lessons from last season. If not, we could be in trouble .... and I don’t think it will take much for him to lose the dressing room....

 

The last nine games of the season were fortunate in that injuries forced a tactical change to three at the back though the Luton game like Millwall was a case of memory loss and the Leeds loss could be put down to his lack of tactics on the day whilst Bielsa used his experience of just the first half to change things for the better....still that’s gone now. A new season in front of us and the way things are going we will be watching the majority of games this season on our TVs probably.....fingers crossed

 

Last season, we lost at home on 8 occasions and in total drew 16 matches: that’s a return of 16pts out of a possible 72 .....

In isolation, that’s terrible

 

The Liberty fortress it certainly wasn’t last season although SC had said earlier in the season that the plac3 would be a fortress...

 

PNE 3-1 SWA

 

1-1

 

I’m going for a draw game 1-1

 

Thats shocking stats and somehow I can't see being improved on this season .

 

But those shocking stats were still good enough for a play-off place...

 

Good write up Taff.
Thanks as always

2-1 to PNE

 

Agreed - either an extremely competitive or poor Championship last season?

It’s interesting to read one school of thought on this - the excellent start was achieved on the back of the ‘hangover’ from Potter; the decent end of season came after Lockdown, following a period when the players were away from Cooper.

The middle bit was when the players had Cooper ‘full on’ so to speak.

I’m not saying I buy into the above, but it is an interesting take on last season

 

Cheers 55

 

But was it more of a case that the opposition collapsing at the the run in rather than our excellence ? yes we reached the playoffs but with better form we could have finished in the top two and if we'd continued our poor form bottom 6 ?

 

But if you take any teams losses at home and draws and look at them 'in isolation' the stats are bound to look dreadful.

I take the point that a very good away record made up for too many home defeats.

 

1-1

 

I agree Aswan - lies, damn lies and statistics

 

2 - 1

 

Which way?