Sky Sports pundit Alan McInally believes that Swansea City will survive in the Premier League this season if they produce similar performances to the one that got them a point against Everton on Saturday.
In his review of the game for Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday programme, the former Scottish international believes home form and the two Ayew brothers will be “huge” for the Swans in the final run-in.
McInally praised Swansea’s performance and says that an “underwhelming” Everton side “could have been gone by half-time” after a dominant opening 45 minutes.
“They could genuinely have been gone by half time. They were really good, Swansea. They deserved at least a point, and Everton were a little underwhelming.”
He also praised the performances of the two Ayew brothers, and Tom Carroll:
“They’re going to rely on Jordan Ayew, and his brother, hugely [in the run-in]. Tammy Abraham came on, he had a little half chance he could have scored. Tom Carroll could have scored today, he was very good in the middle of the park.”
It was certainly two points dropped. It was at home, we had 7 shots on target and like Alan says, we should have gone in at halftime with a healthy lead.
Describing the opening goal that went in unfortunately off Kyle Naughton, McInally said it was “unlucky” for the Swans:
“What Swansea did today which was really good was they managed to keep the pressure on Everton for long periods, and Everton were banked in, digging in and trying to clear the danger.”
“Kyle Naughton can’t do anything about the goal, he’s genuinely unlucky. That was unfair on Swansea because they had been excellent.”
The players have certainly upped their efforts under the new gaffer. It would be interesting to see distance covered stats comparing both managers – Paul Clement and Carlos Carvalhal, especially after Clement was critical of the figures after the home defeat against Newcastle United.
McInally added:
“He’s [Carlos Carvalhal] has gone in and the players have been absolutely fantastic for him. They worked really, really well. Middle of the park they were excellent,. Mawson at the back was pretty good with Fernandez. The full-backs Olsson and Naughton get forward as much as they can. Ki wasn’t particularly good, Andy King was ok, but certainly the Ayew brothers are going to be big for them in this run-in.”
“If they play like that at home they should, probably, just about squeak out of it.”
Can the Swans do it? We’re 5 points better off than this stage last season, but we picked up 4 wins in the last 5 to stay up. Doing that this year is a huge ask, when you have the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea coming up, but with a five point gap and a game in hand over some teams around us, we should do enough to stay out of the bottom three.
