Swansea v Cardiff

[jackaway]

The big one today as we face local rivals Cardiff at 17:30 this evening.
Fresh from our trouncing at Bournemouth, where we looked tired, vulnerable in defence and devoid of ideas up front, are we about to blow our season after all the hard work. Just when Norwich and Watford find form and go on unbeaten runs we start to flounder. Football is a confidence game and we look pretty low on it at the moment. Can Steve Cooper rally the troops, one statistic in his favour is that we haven’t lost consecutive matches this season and if the derby game today can’t motivate the players then nothing will.
The good news is Andre Ayew will not be joining Ghana in the Internationals break in S.Africa as it is one of the hot countries on the UK Covid list, and he would have missed games on his return due to mandatory self-isolation.
Jamal Lowe has been called up by Jamaica for the first time, Hourihane and Manning by ROI, and Roberts and Cabango by Wales, so no rest for them in the next two weeks.
Hopefully Cabango and Guehi return to bolster our defence and Whittaker gets more game time up front as he looked lively when he came on against Bournemouth last match.
The form goes out of the window for this one and I’m predicting a tight match and a draw.

[Estoban]

The teams today -

Swansea City: Freddie Woodman; Kyle Naughton, Ryan Bennett, Marc Guehi; Connor Roberts, Jay Fulton, Matt Grimes (captain), Conor Hourihane, Jake Bidwell; Morgan Whittaker, Andre Ayew.

Substitutes: Ben Hamer, Ryan Manning, Ben Cabango, Joel Latibeaudiere, Korey Smith, Yan Dhanda, Jamal Lowe, Wayne Routledge, Ollie Cooper.

Cardiff City: Dillon Phillips; Sean Morrison (captain), Aden Flint, Ciaron Brown; Thomas Sang, Leandro Bacuna, Joe Ralls, Will Vaulks, Marlon Pack; Harry Wilson; Kieffer Moore.

Substitutes: Alex Smithies, Josh Murphy, Jonny Williams, Max Watters, Sheyi Ojo, Mark Harris, Junior Hoilett, Rubin Colwill, Sam Bowen.

[Estoban]

Flint 8’ header
HT 0-1
Hopeless so far, we have no answer to Cardiff’s tough defending and cannot create anything.

[Iolo]

Well, Estoban has given up and gone home early! It finished 0-1 by the way.
We were awful first half, played better second half but lacked a capable striker, as we have done all season, and we struggle to score goals as a result.
I was surprised Naughton was preferred over Cabango, who is better in the air and offers a threat at corners, of which we had 11.
It looked like Cardiff players wanted it more than us, they shut up shop second half and fought hard to defend their lead, blocking our 23 shots on goal.
Even then we could have salvaged a draw but Ayew’s header hit the post and our luck finally deserted us.