Swansea boss Roberto Martinez conceded that he expected visiting teams at the Liberty Stadium to show more offensive bravery.
Despite the changes in the starting eleven and new summer signing Gorka Pintado recording his first league start the Swans found it again very hard to open the Claret’s defence. The Saturday’s league tie saw the same course of the match as in the previous home games against Sheffield Wednesday and Derby County. The Swans dominated most of the time and enjoyed superior ball posession but without any singnificant effect in terms of goals much to the frustration of the Swansea fans.
Martinez shared his views with WM:
| ‘We were all a little bit relieved at the end of last season because we thought going into the Championship things might be a little bit more open.
We thought teams would come here and try to play face to face and open the games up. But even this early on the season, you can see already that teams are coming here with their homework well done. They try to match us up and stop us. I am surprised. Maybe I expected this sort of thing to happen around December, when teams are scrapping for every point and getting desperate for results. But at the start of the season when you are going to a newly-promoted side, I thought teams would fancy themselves to grab the game by the scruff of the neck, dictate things and take all three points. But Sheffield Wednesday came here and matched us up, then Derby changed everything to match us up and had no attempts on target in the first half. And Burnley tried to run the clock down from the first minute and hit us on the counter, which to their credit they knew how to do. The boys showed great personality and great awareness to finish the way they did. They kept going, they kept playing when it would have been easy to go direct and they understood what they were doing. The reward was a great goal which was as good as you will see at any level.” |
Tickets are still on sale for the Carling Cup 3rd round game against Cardiff City on Tuesday night.
