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Swansea v Sunderland
Swans v Black Cats Sat 14 Dec 15:00
Here we go, third match in a week, and the toughest one so far. Sunderland have been in the top six all season and were top at the beginning of November, they presently sit in 4th place, 10 points ahead of us.
It is probably the best time to play them as they have been drawing a lot of matches lately. Tuesday night they drew 1-1 at home to Bristol City, their equaliser coming in the 93 minute to preserve their unbeaten home record.
The Mackems are football mad and with a huge fan base they lead the average home attendance in the Championship at 40,000.
In comparison we are poorly supported and are down in 21st place of the 24 clubs with an average attendance of 15,500.
Swansea are playing well lately and would have been higher up in the table if only they had taken the goal chances their attacking play deserved. Still, four points last two away games, should have been six, and confidence is high going into this match.
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Swansea 2 (Vipotnik 5’ Cullen 17’) - Sunderland 3 (Ballard 28’, Neil 73’, Bellingham 75’)
Where do you start with this team? We go from one of the best defences in the division to a defence that leaks like a sieve. Today we had full backs that couldn’t defend, a winger that couldn’t beat a full back and stayed on and our other winger who could was subbed off.
Coincidence or not, every time substitutions are made we concede, 72’ Vipotnik and Peart-Harris off, 73’ and 75’ two goals conceded as we stand watching mesmerised.
Judging by that one sided second-half today, there’s a huge gulf in class between us and the teams in the top six, we’ve played all six of them now and lost to each of them.
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Game management. We’ve said it all season but it seems this team is incapable of executing it. It’s such a shame as we are so close to being a good side. Once we went two goals up we should have been able to go all defensive, play a low block and shut the game down, just like Bristol City did to them last Tuesday. Instead we think the game is won and take our foot of the pedal.
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To quote from the BBC report above, head-coach Regis Le Bris said "It was clear in my mind that we just needed to fix one or two problems, especially how they escaped our press with long balls down our left. When we fixed that problem, I think we dominated the second half. We were probably a bit more aggressive with our finishing - we created chances and we scored”.
And there it is in a nutshell - out thought by an opposition coach once again. How many matches this season has this happened, go figure.
This still doesn’t excuse the crap defending and ball control.
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Hi guys. Well we did try to go all defensive it’s just that the players weren’t capable of closing the game down. We were like kittens second half whereas Sunderland were all aggressive and kept on dispossessing us of the ball, pressurising us into making mistakes and it worked a treat.
