First of all congratulations to Arsenal. By far the better team and deserved the victory. Wilshere was easily man of the match with his charging runs and I also thought Coquelin had a good game. Good luck to them in the next round. Now onto my moan. It looks like we were once again set up to 'counter-attack' our opponents. There's a verb in there somewhere. Oh yes - 'ATTACK'!! So many times last night, with Arsenal holding such a high line, the opportunity was there for a cheeky dink over the top for our 'wingers' to run onto. There was loads of space behind the full backs but Hernandez, Routledge and Dyer got nose-bleeds as soon as they got as far as Graham and then went no further. The only time one of them got behind the defence he was 5 yards off-side. It didn't help that the over-the-top balls from midfield never came especially when Graham was calling for them (not that he would have done much with it given some of his touches last night). It's frustrating that we seemed to regressed to turning back towards our own goal. The full-backs didn't seem to want to overlap either. I understand that with one up front you can't do a traditional 'get to the by-line and cross' when you've only got one man to aim for but you expect to maybe try it at least once. Surely we didn't want this game to go into extra time? If we want to win we have to try to score and I didn't see much intent of that. Bartley hit the bar and Ki got Scezsny to make a save and that was it as far as I can remember. Apologies, if others have had the same whinge in other threads. A very frustrating night indeed and I sincerely hope we don't now set out our stall to try and do what we did at Chelsea in every single game.
As you say, extra-time was to be avoided at all costs so I was a bit surprised we didn't throw caution to the wind second half.
I wouldnt worry about it too much master, while its clear to see Dyer and DG are struggling of late and our way of playing has changed i do beleive Laudrup has a plan on this. If he can get teams thinking about which swansea city will turn up then that will only be good for us, to do that we need to develop another way of playing,i think its safe to say that we have done that. Before people go overboard about this defensive game plan ask yourself one thing. Why didnt we play that way against Man utd,Chelsea(early season)Arsenal and Liverpool ?? If Laudrup wanted us to play a certain way against the better sides this tactic would have surfaced much earlier..it hasnt. The defensive way of playing through late december and january is all about giving our A system a rest and using the squad of players we have IMO. Laudrup knew everyone would be needed so its maybe better to think of this last month as a circling of the swans wagons! a way of playing to get us through the tough fixture list. We must also remember that with less time to prepare for each game sticking to a certain system and being hard to beat is probably the best way around it. there is less time to get ideas across to players when you only have 2 days to prepare so having a system to play for 5/6 games is a smart move. We could have carried on our passing style but with tired legs/minds and constant squad changes it would have been alot more difficult to secure points and wins imo. Laudrup has been very clever i think . 1. It has given the oppostion plenty to think about when we roll into town as they dont know what they will face. 2. It has made it easier to use the full squad over the busy Xmas period by sticking to a defensive/safer system . 3. He has less time preparing and analising opposition for the glut of games so keeping the same way of playing is a huge benifit to him and players. 4. He has ensured a better chance of securing points with a tired team by playing a less open game,which proved to be correct. If rodgers was manager we would have rolled into alot of these games,had 60% posession and lost our fair share! we can all remember how frustrating things were for us last season and remember it took us until January 1st to win away from home in the league !! Ijust see these recent games as another forward step in our development,we will see the real Swans when the games start to thin out again but we have developed a valuable tool to help us when plan A dont work... its a plan B,C,D etc just like Laudrup said we should have back in the summer
