Carvalhal Deserves Credit After Taking Blame at Brighton

Swansea City boss Carlos Carvalhal took the blame for last weekend’s heavy 4-1 loss at Brighton and Hove Albion, but he deserves plenty of credit for guiding his team back to winning ways, coincidentally with a 4-1 home win against another relegation rival West Ham.

Carvalhal was critical of his own decisions at Brighton, admitting that he allowed his team to be ‘too open’ as he made bold and risky changes too early, leaving his side defensively vulnerable as they took full advantage as he switched to a back four after conceding an early goal.

It was a small reminder of what happened around this time last season and ensuring we didn’t suffer a repeat of it. After a good spell under Paul Clement, we were back suffering a poor run of form, but we this time around we showed no signs of that happening again, by getting back to winning ways – our best since Carvalhal’s arrival said the man himself.

‘We are progressing, it was an important victory. We lost last week and I said we would learn. It was my fault that we lost last week, we were too open.

‘I put the players in the centre of everything. If you don’t have players who follow your ideas you can’t achieve anything.

‘We have trained hard at corners this week, movement, and we scored twice from them. Now we must create another strategy for the next game.’

We didn’t look up for it at Brighton like we did against West Ham, there was a massive difference and it was good to see that sort of turnaround in attitude. We were hungry from the first whistle to the last and even when we were comfortably in front at 3-0 and 4-1, we still looked hungry to improve our goal difference even further.

Like Carvalhal said, the players also deserve the credit for one of our best and most professional performances of the season, but Carlos has been immense too. There were four goals scored, we didn’t score any in November, a month where we managed just 4 shots on target in as many games, half the tally that we managed against West Ham. Yes, these are just numbers, stats, something Carlos isn’t a fan of, but they at least help to prove just how much of an improvement he has inspired. There’s more, 15 games in all competitions, 8 wins, 27 goals scored and a plus-13 goal difference for the Portuguese. We’ve finally got more points than games played, and we’re in 13th place. Nose-bleed territory. Some fans also criticised the transfer deadline-day deals of Andy King and Andre Ayew, but both were superb against West Ham, and look like they can nail down a first-team place for the remainder of the season.