For many months excuses adorned this Forum justifying Swansea City's slide down the table,and their general inability to live up to the very high expectations placed on the player's shoulders. Some insisted that,"we are better than most other teams around us",and,"other teams are jealous of our players",etc.,etc.,etc. Yet the slide continued,points were lost against seemingly "poorer","weaker", teams. So,there had to be reasons for this inability to sit comfortably in the top half of the table,safe from any talk of relegation. Right? Right. Excuses such as "we have more injuries than other teams":"we are the unluckiest team in the League":"we are also in Europe";"we never get any penalties":"referees and officials are biased against us":"referees are thieves",(that was my favourite),were trotted out on a daily basis. I could go on,but those will do. I didn't buy into most of those and got harangued as a result,being told quite forcefully that, "I wasn't a true supporter of The Club". "Just wait until we are at full strength again,then we will really start to climb up the table,beating all the poorer teams on the way up",insisted many. Well,nothing much has changed,and the team is still hanging around the relegation zone. Then came the managerial sacking,and Michael Laudrup's departure has been heralded with much joy in quite a few circles. "Ah,now things will get better",extolled many. "It's all been his fault"- apparently. His detractor's began a witch hunt,coming out with the following,"the player's wouldn't play for Laudrup";"he had lost the dressing room";"he was never at training sessions";"he was in France";"he wouldn't travel with the player's when flying,preferring to go in his private jet","he didn't like laverbread",(I made that one up,good,eh?),etc.,etc.,etc. So,which is it? I'm confused. Is it all down to the excuses listed above,or is it all down to Laudrup? You can't have both. Or can you?
It's one of those excuses you listed Vetch But I for one would love to know what the hell happened behind the scenes/training ground etc after winning the COC as since last year we have looked a different team to the side Laudrup had during the first 6 months in charge.
2/3 games into the season I came to the conclusion that; - this season we wouldn't do so well against the big clubs as they set up to counter the way we play now (rather than play their usual more open style) and their superior fire power would ensure they nick it most of the time. - this season we would do better against teams in the bottom half as we now possessed more firepower (Bony) and different types of attackers to crack different nuts (Bony, Michu, Pozuelo, Shelvey, Dyer, Routledge and a fit Pablo) I thought that if everything went absolutely right we could get 50-55points (I thought there was an outside chance of that happening as the Europa would mean everyone getting games, rotation keeping people fresh, and the team would gel quicker). I thought it was more likely however that we would score in the late 40s and I had a sneaking feeling we could go all the way in the cup. As ever the minimum we required was a score in the low 40s. Anything less would constitute failure. - I think it is true that we look stronger against the weaker teams. Laudrup only lost 2 games to bottom half teams (Cardiff and West Ham). I believe this trend will continue under Monk (as it is the same players playing the same brand of football in the same system...I see no reason to alter my opinion). Which is just as well as we have 7 of these teams in the final 10 fixtures. I believe we will finish relatively strongly averaging roughly 1.5 points a game. I believe this would have been the case under Laudrup too. - I think I got the Europa side of things wrong. Rather than help us gel it meant we never got the chance to start the same XI 2 games in a row, despite the rotation the squad was still at a disadvantage to our rivals (Palace are the only victory we have after a Europa game)...and we picked up lots of injuries. It is the injuries and the extra Europa games (..and yes the bad refereeing is a factor too) which will lead us to finish approx. 10 points worse off than what we could have achieved IMO. If we didn't have so many key players out at the same time I believe we would have turned a couple of draws into wins and maybe picked up a win or a couple of draws against the big boys. I don't believe I have made excuses. I believe I have reached my conclusions on the many factors and the evidence before me, calmly and rationally. (I hope this is taken as it is intended...an honest, thought out response to a good thread)
My opinion is that Laudrup underperformed, I supported the man expecting to see an improvement when the weaker teams came along. This didn't happen, the Swans looked just as inept against them as they did against the stronger teams thus he had to go. We were not the only team suffering from injuries so when the team goes out against all opposition and a win didn't seem likely a change has to be made, the Premier League is not the place to make rash decaisions hence why Laudrup had as much time as he did to try and turn things around but this was clearly not looking likely. Some here believe the manner of the sacking was rash but they forget that for months the pundits and media noted the Swans sliding down the table. Whilst players were injured for a period of time, there was a full squad available for other periods and we still looked lacklustre such as against very inferior opposition such as Cardiff, St Gallen and the Romanian team. The poor performances could not continue.
Correct me if I am wrong but I think we slid down near but not into the bottom 3 once this season otherwise we've hovered around mid table for most of the season ? Due to other teams around us not taking advantage of us while briefly down there and their losses going in our favour often,we played our way out of trouble so far thus making us better than most teams around us ?
Not exactly, our performances and results became worse than those below us who had gained on points difference. But these teams are also performing poorly so they didn't take their chance when it was presented but trends showed they would have overtaken the Swans if Laudrups style had continued.
I don't think that at any point this season have we "slid down the table". We've managed to maintain 10-12 position consistently. But the nature of the bottom half is that if you win any game you go up about 4 places because it's so tight.
We went from 9pts clear to 3pts clear, with a whole host if clubs between our position and 17th getting closer to the Swans. That's a slip.
Today will tell whether the right mans in the job , the initial 11 on the park (excluding Everton) have been pretty much the best available .It'll be the substitutions today which will see whether Monk is learning the job quick enough .,hope so other wise the knives will be out with only 6 games gone .
One thing's for sure, Monk needs three points today as a manager, as much as we do as a club. No excuses. I'm not interested in seeing the lads play with more spirit today, I'm ONLY interested in a win. So far as I'm concerned they can all walk around the pitch so long as we put the ball in the net more often than Palace. That's an extreme view of course and I hope to see the lads leave nothing out there in terms of energy because they've got a long break coming up to regroup and rest. We're at that stage of the season where results count more than performances. Palace won't roll over because they want the points as well but I can see us winning providing we match their energy and physicality. Oh, and it would be nice if our defenders didn't give them a helping hand.
Some of us, me for example still believe our fortunes would have changed, but ML was then sacked, hence why some of us are still up in arms on his sacking. ML never had a fully fit team, not even in his final game. So it wasn't that our team got better at full strength AND THEN Michael Laudrup got sacked.
There are two things that happened at the COC final: a) Bartley becomes Mr. Invisible, to be banished to Birmingham on loan this season; b) Ki plays center half instead of Monk in the final as Chico was not available. Then everything starts to go down hill. Just curious! Bartley may be an unrelated side-show. But, to think that Monk didn't have his nose put out of joint by not starting the Final in place of Ki is naive. I wouldn't doubt that there may have been unrest fomented behind the scenes, but by who and how, and was it justified or self-serving. Like any good "crime thriller", the only person with clear motive to stir **** was Monk. Please offer up others if they exist. This is purely conjecture on my part. I know nobody and have no "dai facts". But there are a lot of things too coincidental to be dismissed out of hand. EDIT: it just occured to me .... Ki gets shunted off to Sunderland. I know the "official" public reason, but what is the real reason. And, whose decision was that really.
It was contractual! Ki has in his contract 22 starting games (Nice one Huw) and since Laudrup was not going to give him that, we had to send him out to comply with his contract.....................
Can you add 'stomach bugs' to that list Vetch!....................... please log in to view this image
And laudrups inability to communicate with his players... He has gone now anyway and we have a far better manager and that's all that counts......
