Is the reason why Swansea have performed so average in the Premier League (not in Europa League) this season, because the heart in Swanseas "machine room" the defensive midfielder (Canas) and the creative midfielder (Shelvey) are new in Swansea and need some time together before they preform optimal. Or are they just not good enough (Canas and Shelvey)? Have we as fans underestimated the time it takes to fine tune our new central midfield.
Think Canas has plenty of promise but unsure about Shelvey as his passing can be too erratic but they re both still young with lots to learn and it will take a while for them to Gel
Dont you realise who Swansea played these few home games? This is the time to show character, 9 points from the next 3 matches!
Bang on mikra never a truer statement. We have played 4 of the top 6 so far. Lets kick on and pack in tye points, this game will not be easy with a new manager and no pressure on him as they are away but we need to go at them like we did against west brom last year
The reason why we are "average" is because fans don't consider who we play, and expectations are much too high.
I'll take "average " for now, we're in a good place considering our stop start to the season. Where as we drew against Soton away last season we lost this time round but the other results are pretty much as expected .Todays' the day where we need to kick on but injuries appear to be against us at the moment but we look strong enough to get results against teams at our level regardless and thats all we can hope for .
good op . I think Canas and Shelvey need time to improve but I think Canas is already at a high level nd is doing really well. It took leon 5 yrs to play that position ,canas is almost at the same level in 5 weeks !! The question mark for me is shelve,if he doesn't start putting in 8/10 performances more regular then we can file him the same as Ki sung, I have learned this was not a specific Laudrup signing either but a joint move where Laudrup has agreed to work with him and there is obvious ability that can be worked on in fairness. A big factor is also that Europa league and international breaks has meant that its been harder for the squad to train together and indeed gel together, that will indeed take time. Todays game is a must not get beat, if we lose it I will be very worried. Canas is doing a great job .shelvey needs to get better though,its clear to see why Brenden sold him to Huw ,he has ability and in time will improve and be a good player,but we are almost as strong as any midfield so shelve needs to step it up and also speed it up, he ponders a bit too much for my liking which does slow us up @_
Yeah average is such a odd word. I would love to finish this season mid table and get a good run in Europe going too, I havent really expected too much from away games and against the top end teams so in my eyes we are performing bang on what i wanted. A mid table finish and Europa league champions would be in my eyes our best season ever
Average? Hmmm.... we're one of the smallest, if not the smallest club in the League that's punching above its weight. Because of that we don't have top players, we have decent ones at this level, no more than that. If they were superstars they wouldn't be here. As others have pointed out we have also played some really tough fixtures, so the question posed by the OP is premature.
I think the OP is fine, its genuine enough IMO. Do I think we are average ? well, we haven't been exceptional and we haven't been total crap so I don't think average is a million miles away from where we are at. Can we expect anything more than that ? well, I personally felt we threw points in some games because we defended poorly, I feel our performance overall is very good but lapses in concentration are costing us. The points about shelve and canas are valid as they have both featured in quite a few games (somebody will probably know how any games they have played) and have influenced things both good and bad. Id settle for 17th this season,the same as I would have last season and the season before. It is difficult to be objective sometimes though,we all know the club are punching above their weight and I think the OP knows this too he is just trying to create debate about how the new players are intergrating into our team and discussing if there is a link , that's all fair to me
I didn't say the question wasn't fair. Nor did I say it wasn't genuine. What I did say is that it's premature. I agree with you NJ that we've been pretty average so far but you have to judge that against a backdrop of who we've played against and the fact that a chunk of this team are new to each other. It's also a perfectly valid observation that most teams we've played are top teams who will be above us come May. Let's revisit this in December. If we're still 15th by that stage then yes, we've been average - and that's probably being complimentary.
"Can we expect anything more than that ? well, I personally felt we threw points in some games because we defended poorly, I feel our performance overall is very good but lapses in concentration are costing us." Agreed Norway but also. "Can we expect anything more than that ? well, I personally felt we threw points in some games because we FINISHED poorly, I feel our performance overall is very good but lapses in concentration are costing us. And thats the way it's always going to be with the personel we have at the club. Whilst we generally gel as a unit, we will continue to make individual errors more often than top quality players at the bigger clubs. Thats the way the football world goes around. We are average and as long as we stay average we will stay in the premiership. Anything else is a bonus!
cant argue with the last few posts though I will say that if the level of individual mistakes continues we can kiss our prem status goodbye. Irrelevent of who we have played the mistake count is far too high and is below our usual standard. Of course our players are going to fook it up from time to time, that again is part and parcel of what we are but from what I have seen a lot of our mistakes have been out of character for us, the reasons for the errors are probably more to do with other factors than the opposition forcing us into mistakes . It is not lost on me who we have played, as my post match threads of these games will confirm you are preaching to the converted in terms of where we should be as a club in this league, having said all that we have generally done better in our error count than we have done so far this season. Todays game will be very interesting, and I must add that while I have highlighted our errors I must also point out that our finishing has also been woeful at times this season, the combination of the these two factors see us where we are in the league but I 100% agree its very early days to judge . As I said weeks ago, we an properly judge our progress after about 10 games
Is average losing to United, Spurs, Arsenal, Southampton Drawing against Liverpool Beating, West Brom and Palace. If so, we have been just as average as the last 2 seasons pretty much, so seeing as we finished 9th and 11th, i'll take average. Personally I see that as pretty darn good. Or is average being in 15th place in the league? In which case if you look at it at that way, we have been average, but then we have played 5 above average teams (based on our average last season) and only 2 teams who averaged less than us. Interesting isn't it, this whole Average thing. So, what are you basing your "average" on?
Unfortunately one or two people seem to have forgotten we have played Utd, Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool in our first set of games
Maybe they don't realise that we are only 1 point worse off than this stage last season. And given the teams we have played I consider that to be a pretty good job well done so far
I take it you think we are a better than average team performing below our capabilities ? I think we are an average PL team really. The above average teams are the top 6 surely ?
