Swansea v Birmingham

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Swansea v Birmingham Sat 17 Jan 17:30
Our latest opponents Birmingham are back in the Championship after a season in League One in which they ran away with the title, amassing 34 wins and 111 points after spending 25m in doing so, with 12m on one player Jay Stansfield from Fulham.
Relegation to League One provided them with a reset and a better opportunity to invest more in players without breaking FFP rules.
The excessive spending continued with 21m on players last summer but half-way into the season they are only two points and three places above us on 34 points. Strong at home with only one defeat but not too good away with two wins from 13 matches. They last won an away league match 8 games ago, a 0-1 win at Preston last October. Their manager is Chris Davies since June 2024. He is an ex-Swan and was a coach here under Brendan Rogers.
The reverse fixture ended in a 1-0 defeat for the Swans with a Dykes header in the 94th minute after a Vipotnik goal was ruled out for off-side in the first-half (replays showed he was on-side).
Swans, after defeat at Millwall and defeat at home in the FA Cup need to start winning again. Chance after chance went begging against West Brom, we just could not find the winner and lost in the penalty shootout lottery. Coupled with two preventable goals against with deputy goalie Fisher not commanding his area it will be a welcome return for Vigouroux who was outstanding against Millwall.

[Estoban]

We were unlucky to lose at their place, hopefully it’s revenge time.
Our weakness at set pieces/long throw-ins with zonal marking was apparent again and continues, also our habit of conceding late goals.
What the Cup defeat to West Brom showed is that some of our fringe players are not Championship standard and some regulars are not good enough to get us promotion, despite what we thought was such a good transfer window last summer.
Sitting on the bench all season and not being picked is an unaffordable waste for a club like Swansea, who are shackled by Financial Fair Play rules after overspending previously, this being the last year of the three year assessment period. Sheffield Wednesday have found to great cost what happens if you step out of line.

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Liam Cullen is back in training and in contention for the Birmingham match, for what it’s worth.

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Swans: Lawrence Vigouroux, Ethan Galbraith, Ben Cabango (c), Cameron Burgess, Josh Tymon, Jay Fulton, Goncalo Franco, Melker Widell, Ronald, Jisung Eom, Zan Vipotnik
Subs: Andy Fisher, Josh Key, Marko Stamenic, Malick Yalcouye, Liam Cullen, Bobby Wales, Joel Ward, Zeidane Inoussa, Ollie Cooper

Birmingham : James Beadle, Christoph Klarer (c), Phil Neumann, Tommy Doyle, Paik Seung-Ho, Kyogo Furuhasshi, Patrick Roberts, Tomoki Iwata, Lewis Koumas, Kai Wagner, Marvin Ducksch
Subs: Ryan Allsop, Scott Wright, Willum Willumsson, Alfons Sampsted, Kanya Fujimoto, Jay Stansfield, Menzi Mazwi, Dan Isichei, William Burrell

[jackaway]

Match report

https://www.swanseacity.com/news/report-swansea-city-1-birmingham-city-1-0

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Reaction from Matos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbAt3QG6rTo

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Swansea 1 (Vipotnik 21’) - Birmingham 1 (Roberts 72’)
Another match where at the final whistle you’re sitting there and thinking how did we not win that (leaving out the swear words!).
Another disappointment was the order of the day. Three times we hit the bar, penalty appeal turned down, opposition break away late on, goal conceded and SNAFU.
We certainly played well but it’s always the case of substitutions are our downfall, late goals and poor refereeing.
Birmingham will be happy with a point, Swans will be so frustrated.

[Estoban]

Those efforts on goal are going to go in soon and the odd goal conceded won’t matter. Vitor has improved us so much especially at home where we were unlucky not to get our fifth consecutive win last night. We are a striker, a winger and a defender short of being a good side and I hope we can raid the loan market to get at least one of them. Franco was back to his best, the Duracell bunny Widell was everywhere and Galbraith what a player.

[Iolo]

Iolo here, our high intensity football cannot be sustained over the ninety minutes, this is why it’s always late on that we tend to concede. I agree that the subs seem to have an adverse effect, the quality is not there. What do you think of the rejuvenated Fulton then, reminiscent of his PL playing days, blocking shots, crucial tackles, well done to him. Matos has certainly motivated the players and influencing his own style of football on them. We are playing much better since he’s taken over from Sheehan, just the shortage of goals are missing.

[Iolo]

Here are extended highlights -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgo1QDrI7h4

[Iolo]

Got to mention that ref, making Fulton go off, he didn’t want treatment, didn’t get any, but ref still made him go off, then Brum scored when we were down to ten men, argh!

[jackaway]

I agree.
This rule that injured players have to go off if the trainer comes on to attend to them and then wait 30 seconds to be called back on by the ref is unfair.
Particularly unfair when it was well over 30 seconds before the ref allowed Fulton back on last Saturday.
As a result we were punished by being down to ten men and missing him as a key defender.
Birmingham go on to score in his absence and we drop two points and the win our play deserved.
How unfair is that?