Swansea City boss Paul Clement praised midfielder Roque Mesa for his performance in Saturday’s 0-0 draw against AFC Bournemouth.
The Spaniard, who arrived in the Summer for a £13m fee from Las Palmas, made only his second Premier League start of the campaign, his first since our opening home game of the season – a 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Manchester United.
Having recently failed to even earn a place on the bench, it was a shock to see that Paul Clement had given him a starting berth on Saturday. With nofresh injuries in midfield, Mesa was expected to miss out on a bench place once again, but surprisingly he was brought in to play in his preferred defensive midfield role as Clement switched to a 4-1-2-1-2 diamond.
Mesa’s inclusion was one of five changes. Tammy Abraham made way for Wilfried Bony who wasn’t fully fit. Captain Federico Fernandez missed following the sad passing of his father so van der Hoorn started alongside Mawson in defence. Carroll and Ki also started as the two wide-midfielders as Dyer dropped to the bench.
Mesa produced a solid and promising performance in front of the back four. There was nothing spectacular on show from the Spaniard, but it’s still early days for him , he did the basics well and didn’t make any costly mistakes having done so in earlier games. He had been guilty before of losing possession in dangerous areas, but there was none of that on show.
Clement told the Official Site after the game:
“I will say something specific about Roque Mesa because I have been asked a lot about him this season,”
“I thought he did a really good job for us and that was a very encouraging sign from him.
“The more he plays like that, the more he is going to be on the pitch
Hopefully Paul Clement will now look to bring some much needed consistency to the starting eleven, and put some faith in the system and starting eleven. It looked like it was near enough our strongest side, though Abraham up top with Bony is much better choice and would surely have happened on Wednesday night if it wasn’t against his current club. Carroll still looked a little edgy at times and lacking confidence having made a few basic errors early on, but he grew into the game in the second half, and hopefully he can get back to the form he showed last season.
Share this article
Related Articles
