Now before ANYONE gets on my back........this is not an anti Swansea thread or a wum I just watched a thoroughly entertaining game of football as a neutral..............it is great to see that Swansea have not abandoned the footballing ethos that got them promoted and that has won them many admirers, but which is the most important.......PL survival or sticking to your principles? (again not a dig), but you are always going to have a big job on your hands going to places like Man City and Chelsea and trying to "outfootball" them..........did anyone else notice that whilst Chelsea were willing to play football, that they didn't mind putting their foot right through the ball when it mattered? I watched the whole game, and whilst I have to say the better team won (CRACKING GOAL BY YOU LOT BTW) I don't think 4 - 1 was a fair reflection, you were the architects of your own downfall by going for it too much, What is the most important PL survival or winning freinds? Play your attractive, attacking stuff at home against teams you have a good chance of beating by all means,,,,,,,,,but learn from the likes of Stoke and Bolton for instance............play your football at home against teams you have a decent chance against......but trying to "outfootball" the top teams away from home is a recipe for disaster. Bolton and Stoke took the pragmatic attitude and have established themselves as PL clubs, are they right or is the cavalier attitude shown by Blackpool last year, and so far Swansea this year the way to go? Do Swansea want to "go for it" win friends and give their fans a rollercoaster ride and ultimately fail and get relegated (not guaranteed, but likely) or play percentage football away from home, and in the tougher home fixtures....saving their "pretty" stuff for winnable games, survive in the PL and then kick on? A dilemma I'd like to have as a Cardiff fan.........as I say not a wum and a genuine football query
I would prefer to go for it, our style of play has got us this far, and when you play teams that have spent 100s of millions on their teams what can you do? There are many more teams in this division who are more like wigan or west brom than teams like man city or chelsea.
Agree with Jager, there are not many teams who can 'play their game' in their first three away games - even if they were Man City, Arsenal & Chelsea. They have to wait until at least December to have played a good cross section of this league. Keep it up boys!
Don't think anyone on the pitch or behind the scenes is thinking of "winning friends", just sticking to our philosophy of trying to play attractive, possession football - the type that got us into this Division but has historically been openly mocked by Cardiff fans and others (the OP included). I think we can have our cake and eat it provided it's done properly. The game last week proved that. I also think discussions like this are facile (my favourite word right now) and irrelevant as Rodgers won't ditch his footballing philosophy, nor should he. Having said that I have noticed a tendency to play the long ball occasionally now (Dyer's goal last week) whereas we may not have tried that in seasons past so I don't think it's accurate to say we always play tippy tappy. As for "you were the architects of your own downfall by going for it too much" I totally disagree. It's just a gulf in class that did for us. Simple. In fact, in the second half we should have gone for it as they were down to 10 men but we gave them too much respect. Had we done so we might have made a game of it. I still think that we can be true to ourselves and stay in this Division.
Today was an interesting and illustrative day. Second half, two goals down, one man advantage, and the other team scores one more goal than us and we barely get a decent shot on goal. I am going to take another look at the game tomorrow from a more analytical perspective but I wanted to see more "fight", more urgency, more something in the second half than what I saw. Chelsea are a good team, a very good team, but not that good. We all talked about a Plan B a couple of years ago ... do we really have one now, cause for 90 minutes our Plan A, even with a man advantage was not getting us into scoring positions.
I agree hit I think when leon went off, whether injury or tactical I think we should of put Danny Graham on and git at them, no disrespect to routledge but he didn't take his chance today gave the ball away too much. They counter attacked so quick and powerful it was bang on the button,. We must keep to our principles as this will set us in good stead for the rest of the season, Keep up the good work and we will be fine
Thing is yankee stoke are losing 1-0 at home playing route 1 football , they have no plan b they just play the way they play, they have been good at it, who's to say the way that we play is not equally as good for us? Plan b,c,d,e etc is just something fans say, I trust Brendan and the boys to do what is needed, we have not played specifically well against , chelsea,man city or arsenal , but they have spent between them about a £1bn on their teams, we have spent what £10m-£11m?
Proph, I have to agree with what has been said before, our passing game will stand us in good stead, but we really have to turn up, at this level, and today we didn't, and I was disappointed with Rodgers substitutions, very strange indeed, taking our best off, did he conclude the game was over at half time? but taking Britton off for Routlidge, was a poor call in my view, and then he makes matters worse by removing Dyer from the field, If he's going to bring on Dobbie then switch him with Gower, for crying out loud!.................. please log in to view this image
I agree but play your football against the likes of WBA and you will get success ,,,,,,as last weekend proved but Chelsea away, forget the good stuff and dig in, not pretty or nice, but the way to survive.
I was sat on my hands with my mouth shut in the Matthew Harding end and Chelsea looked class. They're touch and accuracy was a step above us. I do have to agree a bit with prophet though. So many times I was screaming (internally) for a quick ball to be played over the top and it never happened. We seem to always have to play through 3 players before the ball can be played forward. I only wish at times we just go for it with some quick touch stuff and go for it. It was the same when I went to the arsenal game. Agree when they went down to 10 Graham should have been on. Thought routledge was poor. Chelsea played the right ball perfectly every time even when they're down to 10. Monk was injured but struggled through. Thought Taylor was our best player again. Sinclair needs to put more effort in tracking back. Cole is a quality LB even if he Is an idiot. Terry had nowt to do. Ivanovic was great. In summation (as I'm rambling after a few jars) I just think we need a bit of forward impetus at times. I don't think it's through fear I think it's just the mindset. Release our quick boys earlier with a ball over the top and we'll get more opportunities. We weren't meant to win this one though so no hardship. Sleepy time. Have a good weekend all.
Jager ... Plan B doesn't mean shifting to Stoke-ball, it means making smart adjustments, it means not pushing the ball around at the back like we're winning 3-0 and absorbing pressure. It means showing more urgency, it means being creative at a team level and individual level, it means putting the ball into the box and creating some havoc. ... because we're 0-2, then 0-3 down and we're playing against 10 men FFS and because our Plan A, for anybody who saw what was going on, was easy for Chelsea to absorb and looked like we were playing in neutral. Even the TV commentator's said that "we didn't go for it". It means ..... e.g. Sinclair - if he's not getting the ball given to him he disappears, go hunt for the thing, get creative, think out of the box. On a day like today, when our most dangerously creative player day is our right back we've got some serious self-evaluation to do - at a team and individual level. In the second half, we had two crosses into the box of any quality. The first was a corner that Ash had a virtually free header on which was cleared by a defender on the goal line. The second was a free kick from Gower on which Ash scored. Now, looking at last week's game (Smalling's goal) and perhaps this week, one might come to the conclusion that Chelsea suck at defending crosses (kinda like us last year ) .... so here's a novel idea, let's try putting the ball into their box - from different angles, to different depths with different pace and let's see if we can't create some pressure and cause some havoc. We have Lita who can spring and Taylor (who's gotta start showing more in the air for his height) and Sincs and Dyer and others can come "crashing" through or hover for scraps. But ... we can't just keep passing the ball around our half-way line when we're 0-3 down as if we're winning 3-0. If we had to do that for a very brief spell because the other team had just managed to clear the ball out to the half way line after a ton of pressure and their center forward was busting a gut to close us down then fine; or perhaps we'd been going hell-for-leather, playing at a very high tempo for 10 minutes or so and just needed to gather ourselves and take a spell before going again, then fine ..... but really for 45 minutes with one man superiority. They say the way we play is pretty, it's easy on the eye .... well losing 1-4 against 10 men and losing the second half 1-2 with one man superiority and limited apparent urgency and threat is pretty too, it's pretty ****ing awful.
Away games against grand teams like Chelsea need a bit of hoof ball with Graham & Lita up front IMO , trying to bring it out of our end led to giving up the ball on many occasions . All true roads lead from October , good or bad . We'll know how scary , or not , things are by Halloween . 7 points out of 12 this month will have us on track & confident .
Yankee I know where you are coming from, but the reason why we lost the game is simple, Chelsea are a better football team than us, we were 2-0 down before we knew it, then Torres went off, I agree that we should go for it as I mentioned earlier, but we have who we have in the team and we must get the results in from other teams. I am sure as games go on we will get the results we need to stay up, we have lost 3 games to clubs who have the strength and depth to win more games than lose, and who are likely to be champions. The point is we are going to struggle no matter which way we play as almost every other club has resources and players beyond us, we must trust the tactics that Brendan comes up with.
I think what we're hoping is there are a sufficient amount of teams in this league who we can beat playing our style of football. Realistically, we're not going to "out-football" Man Utd, Man City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea or Spurs, but anyone else... why not? We played Newcastle off the park at the Liberty the year they got promoted and would have won had it not been for Carroll scoring in the 5th minute of injury time (when he should've been sent off earlier for elbowing Monk in the head) and they surprised everyone last year with a largely similar squad to the one they had in the Championship. Other supposedly "established" (there's that word again!) teams... Everton, Stoke, Fulham, Villa, Blackburn... I'd be surprised if we didn't look very good against all those teams.
agree with scott 100%, horses for courses, less of the pretty stuff against the best sides, save the best for blackburn and bolton etc etc
Stick to our principles - that's what we do best. It may be that we need better players to survive long term in the Premiership, but the Club is growing and better (and more expensive) players need to be brought in gradually. WBA and Bolton were "yo-yo" clubs before establishing themselves in the Premiership.
I don't think we should compromise our style of play nor do i think we need to panic,There's plenty of teams in the PL that are going to ship four or more goals away against the likes of Chelsea and Man City,I would prefer to see what our away results are against the teams that would finish below the regular top six teams over the next couple of months before rethinking my views.
Glad to see this was taken in the way it was meant lads from what I have seen so far there are three or four teams worse than Swansea in the PL (at least) but realistically survival has to be your target 1st season up...................you will be battling against teams that are well used to a relegation scrap..........and will kick, scream, battle and fight to maintain their PL status..........undoubtedly you are a better footballing side than a lot of teams.............but do you think the side has enough "dog" in it............. to win the tough points away, and fight to the end against the "better" sides at home, hopefully you do and should be fine...........but IMO, if you hope to stay up then at times you are going to have to forget the nice stuff, and battle sad but there you are
Problem with your suggestions prophet is we havnt got the type of players to play similarly to Stoke for example
Good thread, interesting viewpoints Yankee - couldnt agree more - we need to be far more inventive and positive in these situations. Cant understand the "we trust in BR", "we were always going to lose this one" - type comments. BR is clearly on a steep learning-curve and on reflection wouldnt disagree with some of the insightful comments made by HTR and Yankee..... lets hope he quickly learns and grows from experiences like today / man city
