Clement Talks of Another ‘Marginal Loss’

Swansea City boss Paul Clement gave his reaction after another ‘marginal loss’, but Leicester City really should have won by a bigger margin.

Statistically, the visitors created three clear cut chances, while the Swans didn’t create one but scored early in the second half as Mawson managed to find the net after a corner wasn’t cleared inside the box.

Clement admitted after his side’s fourth home loss out of five this season that they had taken a step backwards, having taken a step forward after last weekend’s 2-0 win against Huddersfield.

“I thought we took a step forward against Huddersfield – we were able to take what we did on the training field into the game,”

“But today we have taken a backward step. I think our performance in the first half was what did the damage.

“The first goal was a bit unfortunate because it was a deflection off the defender`s head, but we spoke a lot about stopping the crosses.

“Nothing that Leicester did today surprised me or the players – we talked about their dangerous crosses and the danger in counter-attacking situations.

“But there`s talking about it and then there is making sure the application is right on the pitch.

The first half performance was yet another very sub-standard, woeful display that we were fortunate to only concede one goal. Like Clement says, we were far too often, we didn’t function well in midfield and gave the Foxes large areas of space in midfield to counter attack.

“We were too open in the first half – the distance between our lines was too great. We got caught between pressing and sitting off in a deep block.

“You either all do or one or you all do the other, but we got caught between the two.

“Both their goals came from situations where we had the ball. The first was a (Luciano) Narsingh cross. The second was a free-kick and they broke.

“Mahrez was very slightly offside but it was difficult for the assistant referee. That goes against us, but our positioning was not right.

“We got back into the game and we still had a chance with 30-odd minutes, but we didn`t really create anything that was really telling.”

Clement may talk about another ‘marginal loss’, but it wasn’t quite as close as the 2-1 scoreline suggests. Fabianski had to make two superb saves to keep the scores down while we didn’t really create much in front of goal to test the goalkeeper.

“It`s another marginal loss for us,”

“Again, if we get the performance right, I am sure the results will follow.

“If you look at the table, it`s so tight from bottom to ninth or 10th.

“If we start putting together some consistency in our performances, we can find ourselves in a totally different region of the table.”