Clement Thanks Fans’ Support at Watford

Swansea City head coach Paul Clement thanked the fans’ support at Watford – after they watched yet another poor defeat on the road.

Our dismal away record continued, with no wins in the last 6, with 5 of those ending in defeats. The winning goal came just before half time after an error from Alfie Mawson, delaying a pass and conceding possession which allowed Capoue to finish at the second attempt.

The Swansea fans though remained in good spirits throughout the game, and could be heard clearly throughout both halves, though the chants did change after the break, with ‘Clement sort it out’ and ‘Leon Leon’ as they started to become frustrated with what they were seeing.

With Jack Cork’s absence from the game confirmed in midweek, many of us wanted to see the return of Leon Britton, but yet again – he wasn’t even named amongst the substitutes.

As Watford sat back for the final 20 minutes or so, the Swans were having more possession, but our on-going vocal support couldn’t inspire an equalising goal as the crossing delivery and some of the passes in the final third we lacking a lot of quality.

Not only that but the movement was poor and we didn’t look like were in sync with one-another – looking like a team that hadn’t played with each other before. The body language from a lot of the players also appeared downbeat, as if they had no belief they could get something from the game. Considering our excellent form at the start of Clement’s reign, you have to wonder what’s happened for our performance to drop at such an alarming rate.

Clement said afterwards:

“I am aware of the expense of tickets and travel and I know they want to see their team doing well in the Premier League,”

“I thought they got behind the team really well and I hope and expect they will be right behind the team until the end of the season, because we need that help they can give us.

“I want to thank them for coming and trying to help us here and I am sorry they have not seen their team get at least a point.”

Talking about the game and the performance itself, Clement added:

“Overall, we were okay defensively in the game,”

“It`s clear the goal was an individual error and it came at a bad moment for us.
“That`s not something you would expect from one of your central defenders in that area of the pitch.

“Alfie is disappointed. He knows he has made a mistake and he has to learn from that.

“But we still had time to get something out of the game. I made some changes in the second half to get more offensive players higher up the pitch.

“We got enough balls into the final third of the pitch, but it was the final thing that was missing. We didn`t put in enough good quality crosses and we didn`t show enough accuracy or quality with the balls that were in and around the front of their box.

“It was better than West Ham. There was more spirit, more confidence in the players, but we just didn`t have that quality that was needed.”

‘Stoke a must win game’

“We are now in a situation where we have five games left. Hull haven`t won today. That`s a bonus, but it`s also a missed opportunity because we would have been out of the bottom three if we had won.

“Mathematically it is out of our hands, but what is in our hands is the next game at home against Stoke. I believe you can say now that that`s a must-win game.

“I think we need to win three of the five games we have left. Who knows if that will be enough – it`s possible it won`t be.

“But I believe we can win three games. We won four out of six at one stage so why can`t we win three out of five?

“I believe the quality is there in our squad. We showed it when we won at Liverpool and when we beat last year`s champions, and when we beat Southampton and Burnley at home.

“I have seen that quality in big-pressure games. Now we have to show it again.”