Southampton v Swansea (FA Cup 3rd Round)

Southampton v Swansea (FA Cup 3rd Round) Sunday 12 Jan 16:30
Our next match is an FA Cup tie away at Southampton and is a bit of light relief from the intense Championship schedule.
The Saints are not in a good place and have been struggling since gaining promotion to the PL, winning just 1 game in 20 matches.
Their results in the last 7 games are shocking (W0 D1 L6 F2 A19) which includes three hammerings at home
4/12 Southampton 1 - Chelsea 5
15/12 Southampton 0 - Spurs 5
4/1 Southampton 0 - Brentford 5
Ivan Juric is their new head- coach since Dec 24 and is 3 defeats in 3 matches in charge after taking over from Russell Martin. Having spent over 100mill on incoming players last summer and 60mill outgoing they have yet to see any success with such a massive outlay.
For the Swans, bearing in mind we have a Cardiff derby game the following weekend, will we field a full strength team or bring in fringe players. The prize money for winning this match is not to be sniffed at, 115k, plus the TV money, game showing live on BBC2 Wales.

Last season Southampton won 3-1 at the .com, ex-Swan Flynn Downes scoring one of their goals and
they trounced us 5-0 at St Mary’s. The question is are either of the sides weaker or stronger than last season?
I reckon it’s payback time for that hammering and I hope we pick our strongest team. On paper they have by far the strongest team.

Swansea: Jon McLaughlin, Josh Key, Kyle Naughton, Cyrus Christie, Josh Tymon, Matt Grimes (c), Goncalo Franco, Myles Peart-Harris, Ronald, Jisung Eom, Florian Bianchini
Subs: Lawrence Vigouroux, Jay Fulton, Joe Allen, Žan Vipotnik, Josh Ginnelly, Liam Cullen, Nathan Tjoe-A-On, Ben Lloyd, Azeem Abdulai

Southampton: Aaron Ramsdale, Kyle Walker-Peters, Ryan Manning, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, James Bree, Jan Bednarek (c), Joe Aribo, Lesley Ugochukwu, Kamaldeen Sulemana, Mateus Fernandez, Tyler Dibling
Subs: Alex McCarthy, Nathan Wood, Yukinari Sugawara, Charlie Taylor, Will Smallbone, Adam Lallana, Adam Armstrong, Cameron Archer, Paul Onuachu

Another pathetic performance from this Jekyll and Hyde team.
With two ageing full backs playing as centre-backs, two full backs that can’t defend and a goalkeeper who hadn’t played a competitive game this season there was only going to be one outcome.
McCloughlin is even worse than Fisher, the centre-backs were slow and ponderous and we didn’t have a shot on target the whole match against a side that had forgotten how to win and has a defence like a sieve.
We have a clueless head coach and the weakest set of players since relegation, I give up.

Match report

https://www.swanseacity.com/news/rep...swansea-city-0

Match highlights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w6e6oWBI68

Unbelievably weak performance from the team yesterday. The owners need to give Darling what he wants and sort out the Joe Lowe transfer asap. Why was on loan centre-back Abbey returned to his club when we have injuries in his position? Where is the highly paid centre-back Paterson? Apparently Darling travelled with the team but failed a late fitness test but now Williams is saying Darling will miss next weeks Cardiff match, doesn’t make sense unless they’re keeping him under wraps for a transfer out this window.

They were all poor but McLoughlin was awful, rusty and nervous as a kitten. Heaven help us if Vigouroux gets injured.
This is the third game where the players have downed tools, are they listening to the manager anymore?
A mate of mine, a rugby man, watched some of the match because he knew I was a big supporter. He said they looked like a bunch of amateurs and what were they doing passing the ball back all the time even in good attacking positions. He switched over appalled how bad Swansea were.
I can’t disagree with what he said.